Our church has a marriage ministry, which my husband and I are the head of. We are planning our first formal affair 9/26/08 at The Brittany Room in Baltimore, Maryland. We were referred to Jacqueline's catering and met with Mr. William Sterling at the Brittany room. He was very impressive and we liked his presentation over the other caterers we had spoken with. He came very prepared with samples of the table cloths and china patterns for us to select our colors and patterns.
We then agreed on using their services (he told us it was he and his wife's ministry). We had many conversations with him and arranged to meet him to pay him the $650 deposit he required. The Brittany room requires a current insurance and license which he had at the time we spoke with him but it was to expire in about a month, he assured us that all he had to do was contact the insurance company and give the date of our affair and he would be completely covered for any situation that may occur during the affair. Anytime we called Mr. Sterling he always called us right back. We met with Mr. Sterling, gave him our deposit got our contract and left feeling that part of our plans were in order.
We tried to reach Mr. Sterling about two weeks after we gave him the deposit and were not able to reach him. We continued to call for over a week getting very concerned and he finally called us after we emailed him, saying he had been out of town and his phone was lost. He gave us a new number which had a Hanover Pa exchange. Then when we tried to reach him on the new number, he did not call us back again. Again we went through the agony of not knowing what was happening but feeling very uncomfortable.
After trying to reach Mr. Sterling for a very long time we emailed him again stating we were not comfortable with the lack of communication, we felt unsure that we would even have a caterer on the 26th of Sept and preferred to terminate our contract and get another caterer. He called us again and stated he had not gotten any of our messages, did not know what number we were calling (it was the number he sent back to us in an email) and gave us another number again with an Hanover Pa exchange. We also set up an appointment to do a taste testing the upcoming Wednesday. Saturday before the testing was to happen we started calling to confirm Wed. Leaving message after message, he never called us back.
It has now been 4 weeks and we have heard nothing from Will Sterling. He took our money leaving us struggling to find another caterer who will work with us on a promise of paying. He stole from us, he stole from our church and at this point we really don't know if we will have to cancel our affair. We are going to pursue this but wanted to put this out so maybe we can spare someone from our horrible experience.
0 comments