With a group of friends, I purchased tickets in advance to Joonbug.com's open-bar party at the New York City club "Rebel" for New Years Eve 2008. Upon arrival, the event was packed with so many people as to make the club dangerous, not to mention the open bar aspect completely worthless. The management of the club agreed about these conditions and gave me the business card of a contact at Joonbug so I could get a refund. However, while I did not receive the services I paid for and the party was effectively not open bar and even dangerous, Joonbug refuses to refund the amount paid.
While obviously there are hundreds of options for New Years Eve in Manhattan, I ultimately decided to encourage my friends to go to an open bar event put on by Joonbug (the "Merchant") at Rebel because I would expect that Joonbug would be professional and provide good value for the money. It was not. I also assumed that, should any problems arise, the Merchant would be a better organization to work with to resolve it than an individual club. Again, it wasn't.
Below is a timeline of events detailing my correspondence with the merchant for the events that took place from December to March.
December 22
Coming from out of town visiting friends for New Years, I decided to research options for the evening. Joonbug seemed the best choice; while more expensive than other operations, they seemed to be the most reputable choice. The tickets were $115.95 each for admittance to the club, an open bar all night and a "Champagne Toast." I entered my information on the Merchant's website and my credit card was charged by the Merchant.
December 31
Upon arrival to the venue, it was clear the number of tickets that Joonbug sold were obviously much greater than the space could handle. After gaining entrance, I was forced to spend forty-five minutes standing in the line that jutted into the dance floor for the privilege of spending $4 for the coat check. A half an hour later, spending all that time literally pushing forward into a crush of people to try to get to one of the packed bars, I still could not get a drink. All of the bars in the club were similarly overcrowded. On all but one of the dance floors, there was not even room to dance because of the crush of people.
There were massive safety concernsin the case of any emergency, there would be no way such a massive crowd could exit the building safely. Unless I was willing to shove other patrons out of the way, there was no way I would have been able to receive the services I paid $115 for. The "Champagne Toast" never materialized for me because of all of the people.
I talked to the manager at Rebel, Nilisha, who agreed with me that the number of people was ridiculous and unsafe. She gave the contact of Brooke at Joonbug.com so I could get a refund. As my credit card statement said "Joonbug.com", Joonbug was obviously the organization that I thought would be able to refund my purchase price for the services I did not receive.
January
After the party, I contacted Brooke, the Joonbug representative. Brooke responded three weeks after the event by a quick e-mail saying that they were "still speaking" with the venue and would be in touch. She never was. I eventually called her by phone, and she indicated that other customers had complained about the party, but she could not get a hold of people at Rebel. I agreed to wait for her to get back to me. Once again, no one from customer services ever got back to me as Brooke said they would. Note that I never did receive an update from the Merchant over the next two months; I was always the initiator of contact with the Merchant.
February
Finally, February 21, after multiple attempts to once again contact the Merchant, I finally got through by telephone. She said she was trying "every day" to get in touch with them, but they could not get a hold of people at Rebel. I asked why it was important that they needed to talk with Rebel after receiving multiple complaints, but was told it was "procedure." I was also told that such a situation had "never happened before, " and so I asked Brooke or somebody to investigate what the procedures would be if Rebel never responded. Brooke said she would get back to me. Once more, she failed to.
March
In March, I initiated contact with Brooke once again by e-mail and phone. She responded by e-mail that she still had not gotten in contact with Rebel. She never answered my question, and when I asked a followup question, I was completely ignored. She gave no reason why the Merchant needed to contact Rebel, no clarification as to the situation and no alternative recourse. It was clear that she was no longer interested in helping out in this situation.
This level of professionalism was not what I would have expected from a company whose sole benefit to me is to make my event experience easier. Any event can go awry of course, but I would expect that I would find the situation easier to resolve by using a service like Joonbug.
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