He did. On this very thread. Prior to the date of the show. Prior to recieving some of the services he had originally requested.
Ok, Seamus, the thing you do not seem to understand on this point is that the only way he "backed out" of the deal on this thread was by posting an email that he has yet to provide proof of (and that we dispute ever was sent). And ok, 3 weeks before the show, he backs out on the deal after ALL of the advertising was done for his business in so many ways.
I don't think it's a waste of time at all... One of the cornerstones of your contention of wrongdoing was the fact that you had paid out of pocket expenses related to that specific sponsorship. Since you apparantly did not have the foresight to write up a set of terms and conditions for the services you intended to render, I would like to know exactly how much you have lost and how much he owes you.
Seamus, we have REPEATEDLY admitted to our naive mistake of not writing up a contract spelling out specific terms. But the terms were agreed to in a conversation, the very FIRST conversation, I had with Mr. Young. In this day and age, a verbal contract is as viable as a written one.
The cornerstone of our "contention of wrongdoing" is that he agreed to pay a certain fee for the sponsorship, and never paid a penny for that sponsorship. We upheld every part of the advertising bargain we agreed to. Mr. Young never even posted up the banner we sent him on his website as agreed. He did not do ANYTHING he told us he was going to do, including sending payment at the agreed times.
His conduct was deplorable, his lack of communication reprehensible, his attitude abominable. However, he was going to be paying a five hundred dollar difference to have someone present at his table acting as his agent since he would not be there himself. Obviously that isn't going to happen, it's not a service that will be delivered, there's that right off the top of the amount he owes.
I am still trying to figure out where you get the idea that the representation of his table at the show is a $500 difference. You are still going with the idea that Mr. Young agreed to a $250 sponsorship, not a $750 sponsorship. This was NEVER the case, and Mr. Young has yet to prove otherwise. Obviously that service will not be delivered, but that was not a part of the terms of the amount of the sponsorship. Mr. Young stated he had no problem paying a higher fee since we were willing to do this for him - there was not a "labor" charge worked into the fee in any way.
The terms of the $750 sponsorship fee were as follows (to clear this up although I believe it has been stated in several posts) - Advertising as our major sponsor on the front page of the webpage (which we have provided screenshots to show that this was done), advertising as the major sponsor on the Sponsors page (which screenshots were also provided earlier to prove this was done), advertising on the fliers as the major sponsor of the show (which was provided much earlier in the thread to prove this was completed), advertising by word of mouth to other breeders, vendors and contacts in the industry we had about his service (which was proven by other posters in this thread), advertising on all banner ads as the major sponsor of the show (which screenshots mentioned above show was completed), mention of him as a sponsor on any forum postings we did (which was pointed out on just one thread alone here on Fauna on 7/8/08 with the offer to find the others), 1 table included for Mr. Young to ship us materials to set up to advertise his business approximately one week before the show (this is the only term of the agreement we will not be able to fulfill because of this situation). THOSE were the terms of the agreement for $750. The actual LABOR of working his table and setting up his materials was NOT included, but was agreed upon at the price indicated by us several times for $750 as a "bonus" service, for lack of better terms.
His table space itself has been earmarked for another purpose, he won't be using it and you (apparantly, please correct me if I am wrong) never set out a list of terms regarding cancellations, notice of cancellations or deposits. There's a table fee he doesn't owe.
The table space has NOT been earmarked for other purposes. We did make an offer to Rich to use the table for him to advertise Fauna, but Rich declined this offer in PMs because of lack of advertising materials. This can easily be verified by Rich himself. The Supporters table will be a completely separate table in a different area of the show than the table that was to be used by Mr. Young and Reptster. So the table fee is STILL owed, as no one else has purchased that table.
Again, no, there was no list of terms about cancellations or deposits, as the agreement was for him to send the entire $750 at first, then an agreement was made in mid-August for him to send $200 a week for 3 weeks and then $150 for the last payment REQUESTED BY MR. YOUNG. Payment was never received. This request WAS made over the phone, and agreed to by me in our conversation, therefore entering into that contract, but for the SAME AMOUNT total as agreed upon before. Again, I say that we were naive in not having a written contract, but this in no way negates the fact that we had a verbal contract, and that Mr. Young agreed to this amount when he responded to an email specifically stating the amount of $750.
The promotional materials listed his business along with the details of the show itself- did they list any other vendors as well? If so, those out of pocket promotional costs aren't entirely his responsibility, they need to be split between all the endeavors mentioned, either equally or in a manner directly related to the prominence of the logos and business names. You ran a banner ad for him on a website, how much do you charge for that independant of the sponsership? Do you have a set price for that service based on duration or impressions? Do you have a maximum number of advertisers you will add to the rotation in order to ensure that all your advertisers recieve fair exposure? Did you deny other prospective advertisers a slot as a result of the advertisements made for Reptster?
No, the promotional materials did not list any other vendors besides our other sponsor. Vendors were not offered a space on the fliers or banners, but have a separate page devoted to their listings. This was always included at no charge to the vendors above their table fees.
As far as splitting the costs of the promotional materials between sponsors, this is not true, as our agreement with our other sponsor was different than the one we had with Mr. Young. Also, Mr. Young joined with the show AFTER our first sponsor, and therefore all materials (fliers, banners, etc) needed to be redone to include Reptster as a sponsor. Our first sponsor already "paid his dues" with our agreement regarding advertising his show, and it was not his responsibility to have to pay again in order to include Mr. Young and Reptster. So the fee for reprinting fliers and banners to include Mr. Young, in my opinion, is entirely on Mr. Young. Also, because Mr. Young breached our contract and fliers had to be reprinted AGAIN to remove his name, I believe that the cost should be incurred by Mr. Young. We have not requested, however, any more than the original agreement of $750 to settle that part of the situation.
As far as banner ads for vendors, we offered the vendors the ability to have a STATIC banner on our Vendors page at no charge instead of just a text link. Vendors chose whether or not to send those. There is no "rotation" of banners in any way on our site, you can go see that for yourself. Because of this, all of our vendors receive the same amount of exposure as anyone else. Regarding the Supporters page, the only difference for them and the vendors is that they choose a donation themselves. We do not have a set price on that ability, and the reasons for that have been stated in this thread. But they too have static banners on the site.
Yes, we did deny ALL other vendors at the show exposure on the fliers and banner ads because of the space for sponsorship announcements. This service was not included in the vendor fee (table fee), only offered to our sponsors. Even before Mr. Young signed onto the show as a sponsor, this was true. However, banners and fliers did have to be redesigned (which, by the way, takes a bit of time) in order to be able to advertise Mr. Young/Reptster as agreed.
As far as I can tell, and the reason I asked for the information rather than pointing out this assumption, all you are actually out is the fractional cost of some photocopies (that you're still distributing because they have the information relating to the show and other promoters) and the time spent dealing with one aggrivating moron customer. You never delivered the full services that had been discussed so he can't possibly OWE the full price. I'd like to know how much he actually DOES owe.
First, the fliers printed with Reptster's name are NOT being distributed to my knowledge. The ability to do this by the public was taken away by removing the printable PDF from our website. If people are passing out fliers that they printed before this, I cannot say. Also, we went to as many places as possible this weekend or called places we knew had fliers out and asked them to be removed (or physically removed them ourselves). The fliers WERE replaced in as many places as possible.
The only service we did not deliver was the table at the show for his advertisement, all other terms were adhered to by us.
I'm going to take that to mean you're out thirty bucks for photocopies that you're still using, have no set pricing standards, will gouge anyone for as much as you think you can get away with when they talk to you and don't want to reveal how little you have actually spent because it will sound like much less of a travesty than the $750 figure you have been throwing around.
I would like to know where you are getting full color copies, 3000 of them for that matter AFTER Mr. Young signed onto the show as a sponsor, for $30, because I need to talk to your printer. If you must know, we pay almost 3 times that for 1000, which almost eats up his $750 agreement ALONE. The fliers were done in color simply because Mr. Young's logo did NOT print well in black and white, and we decided to move to color copies in order to fulfill our agreement to it's fullest.
No set pricing standards? We had a set pricing standard for the services we agreed upon with Mr. Young. Is it wrong to have different agreements with different sponsors? If so, then explain to me how and why.
Price gouging...I do not see where you are coming up with that idea. Sure, we may not have known what "industry standard" was for sponsorship, but Mr. Young said he had experience with sponsoring other shows, so why did he not tell us it was too high for the industry standard? How were we to know? We certainly couldn't get information from other show promoters (we did contact a few) about details of financial agreements with their sponsors, so again, we had no idea. It was what we thought it was worth.
Does the figure on the fliers help you with an idea of what was spent? Right there was almost $500 ALONE for the fliers...and they were ONLY redone because Mr. Young added to the show. We had plenty of fliers left over without his name on them.
As I said... Theft is theft and he could have stolen a single penny from you and still been in the wrong. That doesn't make it right to demand more from him than you are actually owed just because you have public support on your side and can get away with it. Your attempts to collect payment for services you never rendered are just as dirty and just as thieving as his attempt to not pay you.
So because we didn't spell out our "list of expenses" to you, we are thieves for expecting payment for our services? I am typing this response as others are coming in, and I am reading them, my only suggestion is to read over John's response about time and value of advertising before automatically assuming we are "stealing" money from him and being dirty.
Write up some terms so this doesn't happen in the future. Create a clear schedule for payment and a clear pricing structure for individual or packaged services you intend to offer. Write into your terms some sort of deposit structure to protect yourself, even if the deposit structure is 100% up front payment with no prorated refunds based on customer withdrawl.
Thanks, this ordeal has taught us a HUGE lesson, and we already have this in the works with our attorney so that this does not happen to us again. We may be crazy, but we are not stupid. Naive maybe, but not stupid.
[QUOTEAnd have the decency to demand what you're actually owed, not a fictional number based on services you never delivered and never will.[/QUOTE]
So, now that you have a FRACTION of the costs we incurred to advertise Mr. Young/Reptster, and all of your other questions were answered, are we still dirty thieves for thinking we are owed the entire $750? I'd be interested in your response.
Kelly Kordek