My husband and I had our wedding at Portico on April 3, and 30 days prior to the wedding we met with the owners Kyle and Amy Schafer to discuss the remaining details and provide a refudable damage deposit of $500.00. Two weeks after our wedding I sent an e-mail to Mr. & Mrs. Schafer thanking them for their services, and inquired about when to expect our deposit back. I received a response e-mail a couple days later stating that "according to the contract" they have 60 days after the event to return the deposit. We had no problem with this and sent an e-mail thanking them for their quick response.
Two weeks later I received an e-mail stating that due to financial difficulties and because other couples were scaling back on their weddings, everyone who had a Spring wedding would not received their $500.00 in full but would be receiving their full deposit in 10 equal payments of $50.00. The fact that we received an e-mail versus a phone call was very unprofessional to us, so we contacted an attorney who sent a demand for deposit letter to Mr. & Mrs. Schafer, in which no response was received.
From there I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, and we proceeded to file a complaint with the Small Claims Court.in doing so, we sent out our complaint via certified mail and found that the notice sat on the door for 9 days so we tried a secondary method of hiring a processor only to receive a phone call that the place of residency where we had sent all of our prior payments to was empty and for sale. We have tried numerous times to contact Mr. & Mrs. Schafer through phone and e-mail and have yet to receive a response.
In the e-mail we received regarding the payments that would be disbursed in full over 10 months, it also stated that we would be receiving these payments every month on the 15th. We received our payment in May on time but not for the full amount, because Mr. & Mrs. Schafer claimed that items went missing so deducted this amount from the $50.00 payments even though their e-mail stated everyone would receive a full refund (again another statement that was not followed through), but when the payment for June and July didn't come I proceeded to contact Mr. Schafer again receiving no response, and later received a check on the 29th of July for both June and July. I have spoken to numerous clients who are all having the same problem, and I find it funny how everyone received a check on the same date but received no response prior to the disbursement of these payments.
We have spent countless hours and money on trying to do what is right the legal way, but have no further information on how to proceed because we are unable to find their new place of residency. The fact that these people can run a business where they bind people by contract, only to break the contract themselves is appalling to me and we do consider going to the local news stations about this.
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