45 Riots

lmed with more than 100 clients all asking us to move dates a year later, and all to peak-season Saturdays, all months or years outside of our contractual postponement obligations. Not only were we juggling these demands but we already had clients booked on some of those requested dates and we also wanted to leave some open for new clients. This is not because we wanted be greedy or not give priority to our already-booked clients; we were gravely concerned that, after an entire year (2020) of next to zero income and fighting to just stay in business, we'd suffer again in 2021 when all of our events were 2020 clients who paid us (non-refundable) deposits back in 2019, funds already spent as business revenue to manage our recurring regular expenses and especially after loss of income with COVID, and we'd have no opportunity as we normally do to generate new income for a new year in 2021. The event balances themselves for each event we perform cover only a portion of our outgoing musician payroll per event. We are not highly profitable. We try to keep our client considerations as affordable as possible while paying a very competitive wage to our players with legitimate employee protections and benefits. This doesn't leave very much left over to cover our many recurring fixed expenses, including our admin team full-time salaries and benefits, office lease, multiple employer and event insurance policies, bookkeeping and accounting, legal, advertising and showcasing, media, equipment, transportation, utilities, etc. If we had placed all of our 2020 event clients moving their dates because of COVID to peak-season Saturdays in 2021, not only would we have no income in 2020 but also again in 2021, and we could be sure to be out of business. We had a responsibility to protect our business for ourselves and for all of our clients whose events had or have not yet come up, who have placed deposits with us and expect us to perform. Thus, we first tried to leave some Saturdays open for new clients, to generate the gross revenue we need to cover our fixed expenses. Then, when that was impossible, as in situations like yours where there was a complaint about availability or a demand for a certain date, and it of course being a peak-season Saturday, we were forced to adopt a rescheduling fee as a way to mitigate a small percentage of the lost fresh revenue we would have gained had we been able to book a new client instead. We have a responsibility to our prior-booked clients like you, of course, and with priority, but not at the expense of losing our entire business. We were facing a very grave and unprecedented time. We are a small business without partners or capital investment. COVID shuttered our entire industry for over a year and again, we had over 100 clients to reschedule to just a few dozen choice Saturdays. We were hoping to make the move to more available dates like Fridays and Sundays instead to avoid the loss of revenue again in 2021. When that could not happen, the rescheduling fee was adopted. It wasn't something that made our clients happy, and it did not make us happy to ask it of our clients. We were fighting to survive. I hope this sheds some light on our unique circumstances. For reference, for anyone reading this, this bride's husband also left us a review here on the Knot and said this: "They were incredible. Our guests have not stopped talking about the quality of the band. They played at our reception and also DJ'd our after-party. They were very professional to work with and put on a phenomenal show with minimal need for input from us. The process was stress free and we danced our faces off. You can't go wrong!"

tual item as of the time of the request to reschedule. However, we do not argue this point with our clients. We have sympathy for the concern of health and welfare throughout the rest of this current year for our clients with events in 2020 and we understand the worry for their guests, especially those traveling by airplane to the event, for those of an older age group, or for any guests with an immune system concern. We are happy to accommodate a new date in 2021 instead. We are always prompt, professional, and responsive with our clients. We answered many emails and held many conference calls to discuss this event with these clients. We worked in good faith from the start to offer many available dates in 2021 where they could retain their same confirmed vocalists but they were insistent at first upon only one or two Saturdays as their options where we were already booked by another client with those vocalists they expected. We explained the situation with transparency and their reply was to demand that we switch the vocalists out from under the previously-booked clients, to which we answered that we would not, and that we would never do that to a client. We did update our contract for 2020 and beyond as we had not updated our contract in close to a decade. Obviously, with so much scrutiny on every word of a contract due to COVID19 concerns, we wanted to ensure our terms were articulated with the utmost clarity. Our terms have not changed since the inception of our business almost a decade ago. If you can't hold your event you may reschedule within three months. If you cancel for any reason the deposit is non-refundable as we have to cover operating costs and labor already spent, make up for lost work opportunity on these in-demand weekends as a company, and compensate our musicians for lost work opportunity as individuals. If we don't show up at the held event (never have ever before nor would we ever in the future!) we would of course owe back every dime to the client. Those are the terms. One of the points was overlooked by our attorney during the revision but it was pointed out by another client and has since been quickly and thoroughly rectified. We had already found a mutually amendable postponement date with these clients in 2021 and were set to confirm. We had a conference call with the couple to discuss any concerns with the contract. Our rapport with the couple was very pleasant and they even showed enthusiasm for our resolution of finding a date that worked for both parties where the majority of their confirmed 2020 lineup would still be available. The one changed vocalist was discussed with transparency and a new option presented via media, and someone they had already seen live with us onstage at a previous event - someone they told us they very much enjoyed. Before we got to our scheduled conference call - the time to discuss any needed changes in the contract which we would have considered within reason and changed to move forward - the father of the bride who left this misleading review decided to suddenly have a lawyer present legal action against us. He then went on to harass me through varied platforms with misleading and libelous claims, and attempted to extort money from me by leaving this unnecessary review here but writing me directly to say that he would edit or remove the review if I paid him the non-refundable deposit. I do not owe this deposit back to him. He cancelled our services when he refused to hold dialogue with us to reschedule the event, did not hold the scheduled conference call, and demanded a refund of a non-refundable deposit through his attorney. My own attorneys promptly responded to discuss his incorrect analysis of our contract and we received no reply from his attorney. We have called and written him many times and he completely ghosted us. The event is in effect cancelled between the clients and 45 Riots. They are not holding the event as contracted in 2020 and they are not rescheduling us for the new 2021 date if they even are holding any event. We do not owe any refund of the non-refundable deposit. The client is misinterpreting a paragraph in our contract which addresses a situation where if the band did not show up to a held event they would receive a refund. That speaks to a situation where our travel to an event, meant more for destination events especially to do with airfare, where inclement weather or some other act of God will not allow us the means to get to the event and we do not perform. Then surely we should refund any money paid to that point, of course. It clearly says in our contract that if the client cannot hold the event due to "force majeure" that we can postpone within the three months (though we offered up to a year and a half as a professional courtesy!) and if they decide instead to cancel the deposit is non-refundable. These clients are canceling our contract with them. We have been accommodating all of our clients well outside of the contractual three-month window to reschedule their events to a completely different year, when their events might be months away and we don't event know if there is or is not truly "force majere" on their event date. Again, we are not arguing about force majeure. We are just saying yes to everyone! But, in the process of doing so we cannot guarantee that if a client gives us only one single choice for a new date that their expected vocalists might not already be booked on said date by a client who contracted us months or even over a year ago, long before COVID19. Again, in that case we have had a transparent dialogue and showcased other amazing vocalists from our regular team for their approval. Our new contract has been rectified to include language which is absolutely protective of both parties, if there was any oversight when we first updated the language. We have been responsive to every question, concern, and suggestion from every client. We cannot say yes to every demand of us outside of our obligations, but we always consider everything and offer our time and dialogue. Our team works tireless hours managing our clients with expert care and service. We have bent over backwards to move already 100 events from one year to the next, on top of the many events we already had scheduled for 2021. This has been a momentous task but we have been diligent and dedicated to making things happen for our clients. The language in this review regarding switching out up to an entire lineup at will or because of some shady business practice is absolutely false and very misleading. We, unlike many of our competitors, go thorough painstaking and tedious internal protocol to ensure that we retain the same vocalists and musicians expected by the client on every event, even if it costs us more to do so. We do not in any circumstance move people around, as this client demanded we do for their entitled benefit! Sure, sometimes - very rarely - people have life changes or could be ill or might be called to go on an international tour with one of the celebrity pop artists whose music we cover for our client events, but we never purposely switch lineups around to benefit ourselves. We are very, very careful about this because we understand the disappointment should any change occur and we are aware that many of our competitors do in fact move people around for their own benefit, to book more contracts and make more money. This is not 45 Riots and I wholeheartedly refute the misleading nature of the statement in this review. We have not come to their event date even yet as originally scheduled nor are we now going to be performing for a postponed date in 2021. This client has no basis to speak to any substitutions on their event date. This is completely speculative and not rooted in any fact. They demanded that we only consider one or two Saturdays for their rescheduled date in 2021, at first, where some or all of their expected vocalists were already spoken for. I've explained that above. We immediately addressed this concern, offered myriad other dates as alternatives where the discussed vocalists were in fact available, and in the end worked with the bride and groom directly to find a mutually beneficial date where the majority of their anticipated lineup was in fact available. The one vocalist who needed to change was discussed and the available vocalist from our regular team, amazingly gifted and equally talented, was not only approved by the bride and groom but they showed (in writing!) positive enthusiasm over the new date and lineup. And if COVID19 exists next year we can reschedule again! We have worked with every single client in 2020 to move their dates sometimes up to 1.5 years later, well outside of the contractual there months. We can do the same next year if we need to, to accommodate our clients. Any rescheduling fee, something never needed or even thought of in any past year where we deal with no issues with events needing to be rescheduled, or very rarely at best, is only now a factor because we have moved an entire calendar year of events to a new year. We have no income in 2020. We have lost almost all of our normal flow of new inquiries as most people are naturally concerned about the future of events and are also being careful about the economy and spending on large items due to COVID19. We have no event balance payments to anticipate now in 2020 because we have hardly any events left this year. Now we will have twice as many events in 2021 with enormous outgoing payroll and we will be filled to capacity on every weekend of the year. When things do pick up, as they now have already started with the government reopening in many states, and we start to receive more inquiries like before, we will have to turn most away because we have no or very limited availability in 2021. There are only so many attractive Saturdays in a year for a wedding client and we cap the number of events we hold even though we do have resources to do more, because instead of chasing dollars we care about our impeccable reputation and the sincere quality of our musicianship; we act as a boutique brand serving discerning clientele. If we have no income this year with a loss of new sales and no events left to pay us balance payments due, and next year we cannot book any new clients because we have no capacity available, how can we manage? We are a very small business in the arts. The rescheduling fee is something that will compensate for even just a small percentage of the actual gross margins we will lose next year, which go towards our many operating costs. We have much more to deal with than direct musician payroll, and direct payroll is already extremely high because we pay competitive wages and employ the very best celebrity-level musicians in NYC. We have our musicians on payroll as part-time employees - something most competitors do not do, we have a full-time admin staff with salaries, we have health and retirement benefits, we have unemployment, disability, workers comp, event liability insurance, office lease insurance, etc., we have bookkeeping and accounting, legal, transportation, equipment, office supplies, advertising and promotion (the music videos you see online cost a lot of money to produce especially because we pay all of our musicians payment for everything they ever get called to do - be it against client revenue or out of pocket for promotion), live showcasing where we pay every musician a fair wage for the performance so our discerning clientele can see us in action before committing to a contract (another thing many competitors do not offer, and even if they do certainly not so frequently and in real NYC music nightclubs in front of a live audience), a startup record label which reinvests in the real NYC musical community and with a Billboard Top 20 hit, and much more. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of expenses a year which cannot be met without a steady influx of fresh annual revenue, something lost now for 2020 and 2021 due to COVID19. The rescheduling fee is for clients who are moving from one year to the next where we are accommodating them far outside of our contractual obligations, to salvage just a small percentage of the lost work opportunities by filling 2021 to capacity with rescheduled events instead of new clients. It will take our small business until 2022 to get healthy and move forward. We have an obligation to perform for hundreds of events in the meantime and the rescheduling fee is a creative idea to address the issues we are facing as a small business while we go out of our way to accommodate our clients per their specific needs, with sympathy for their concerns. We have operated with every client, always, and especially with the whole world on edge over COVID19, with prompt, responsive, and professional service, a sympathetic and understanding attitude, a ton of creative solutions and varied options presented, and countless hours spent to hold calls with couples, planners, and family members, addressing every question and concern fully and always finding a solution that leaves everyone happy and the event intact, with 45 Riots ready to rock as always. It is unfortunate that this client was so perturbed with scheduling even though we found a solution that worked for both parties for which the couple was enthused, and perturbed about contract questions which we did not even have the opportunity to address though we scheduled a call specifically to do so, that he ended all good faith dialogue, cancelled our services, and had his attorney take over to demand something which is not his to demand, and then went on a campaign of harassment where he made misleading and false claims in public forums to the extent that the platforms, like this one here, even forced him to revise his statements to delete false and incorrect claims. We have been prepared with his confirmed lineup for the original event date this year with no changes or issues, and we worked very diligently over weeks and weeks to accommodate a new date instead next year with mutual satisfaction, and in the end the clients just decided to cancel. Unfortunately, the deposit is non-refundable as they understood already when they signed the contract. I have been very happy to bring this dispute to a court of law and have a formal ruling. Our team was always in dialogue with this client and the family to address every concern. It only escalated to attorney level because the client here decided that was the way he wanted to take things. We very simply could have confirmed the new date and moved on. We were standing by to do so and after so many hours and hours of labor to appease these clients. The whole situation is very unfortunate. If anyone reading this has any question about this or about our contractual terms or about our operating protocols, about our music, about how we work with our lineups, or anything else, we are standing by to address your questions with a swift, transparent, and thorough reply.