No Craft Dinner Tonight

 This was originally a long Facebook post.  Sufficiently long, that I've decided to simply post it here to.  Enjoy:

So here's what happened. Craft Beer Market had two Brewmaster's dinners this week, one on Wednesday and one on Thursday. The Thursday one was better in the sense that it had featured speakers on sustainability in the craft brewing market. I'd have liked to have gone to that, but Thursday is philosophy night, and I wasn't getting the others to cough up $60.

Anyway, being better, most people opted for that one, and the Wednesday night one only had six people booked as of Monday. So Craft cancelled it and sent emails to those people. Apparently, they did whatever they were supposed to do with Eventbrite to cancel the event, but it didn't take.

Tuesday rolls around and I decide to go. After wasting some time trying to get someone to join me, I finally buy a ticket at the literal last minute. Like, the website was telling me I had less than a minute to buy the ticket before sales close at six o'clock (of note, I was right, the event copy did say six o'clock, because Eventbrite doesn't sell tickets less than 24 hours before the event.

This afternoon, I get two notifications: One from my calendar, telling me the event starts at six (which I had entered manually), and one from the Eventbrite app telling me it started at seven. I double check and find that it now says seven (it also said Thursday, but I wasn't focusing on the date). Again, Eventbrite's own app was telling me the event was on *today*.- or rather, when I looked at the event copy closely, later, it listed both Wednesday and Thursday in different spots.

 

I leave work at six, run a few errands downtown, and head to Craft. The hostess greets me and I tell her I'm here for the Brewmaster's dinner. She tells me that it's tomorrow. "Didn't you get the email about today's dinner being cancelled?" "Nope," I say, double checking my email.

She's very apologetic, and immediately escalates it to management without me asking. The Event Manager arrives. She too is very apologetic, and offers to simply let me use my ticket for the Thursday night dinner instead. Alas, I can't make it. Questioning her about their refund policy, she assures me that I'll get a free refund.

Now that I'm home, I've clicked the appropriate links with Eventbrite to get my money back, and we'll see how that goes.

Good: Craft's staff managed a bad situation well.

Bad: Eventbrite need to improve their software. At a minimum, it shouldn't allow me to buy tickets to a cancelled event, or remind me that it's happening when it isn't. Oh, and if what Craft told me is accurate, they should let the venue organizers cancel events in a less confusing manner.