My company is a pretty decent size (20 employees) and we were provided a reference for Crystal Rose from a business association we both belong to. Trying to support other members, we reached out to them to plan our holiday party of approximately 50 people. \r
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I contacted Jay personally at the beginning of November, trying to ensure we had plenty of time before the date of the party itself, just before Christmas. He was very helpful and responsive initially, and we agreed on several things, like for the location to be at our offices downtown (as opposed to one of their facilities, which made it easier for them), and number of attendees of around 50, and of course pricing (which was several thousand dollars). \r
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From there, it seemed like it should have been pretty straightforward to finalize the plan, but I kept getting no response to my attempts to do so. I called and emailed Jay multiple times to wrap it up, knowing full well that the date was getting closer every day, but couldn't get a call back. In addition to the multiple emails, I left him multiple voicemails, and since I was actually able to catch him a few times, we spoke on the phone personally 3 or 4 times over a three-week period after the initial contact. \r
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Each time we spoke, especially at the end, as the time was moving forward without progress, I asked him if he was sure we would still be OK for our date, since we have a whole company of employees and their families counting on a party, and each time he assured me that everything was fine, and he would be at our location at a certain time or day to simply finalize the details.\r
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Needless to say, that never happened. As of now, I have not heard from Jay, or anyone at his organization, for over 2 weeks. We have finally been forced to hire another company at the last minute. We tried to contact several companies with no luck, because all of them were already booked for our date (big surprise), since we were trying to book a 50 person holiday party at the busiest time of the year with just 2 weeks notice. If we had continued to trust Jay and take him at his word that Crystal Rose would be able to perform our event, we would be completely screwed and had our entire holiday party plan ruined.\r
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THANKFULLY, we found another awesome company who just happened to have that date free for us (literally they were booked up the exact days either side of our target date, just by pure luck) and the whole process of booking was exceptionally easy. I feel like it must have been fate.\r
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After this whole terrible experience I decided to research Crystal Rose online, and found all the bad reviews (not to mention the fact that they ARE IN BANKRUPTCY). Wow. Buyer beware!\r
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I wish I had done this research before I wasted all this time. We are very relieved that we were able to dodge the bullet of using Crystal Rose, BEFORE it cost us too much trouble, and I hope that all of you reading this do your research before booking, rather than afterwards, like us, or even worse after an awful party or wedding, like so many of these other people who used Crystal Rose and then regretted it.
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