We hired this company to dj a NYE dance for a week spent with foreign exchange high school students around NYC. When the dj arrived he was missing the cable he needed to plug in his board. He called dancing djs at 9:00 or so to let them know about the problem. No one ever came with the cable he needed, so he had NO WAY TO PLAY MUSIC AT ALL.
I am also a performer (not a dj), and having recently done a gig in Philly, had my soundcard, cables, laptop and other equipment with me. I went and grabbed about $5,000 worth of my own equipment and hooked it up to his pa speakers in the hopes that he could at least play his laptop though my equipment. His laptop didn't have the music my group requested, but instead had various types of dubstep and other electronic music. I figured any music is better than none.
I got his laptop working (mono out of both speakers, since his laptop did not have any professional grade connections like a firewire or e-sata port). We tried to play the same song three times and the sound was terrible.There was no bass at all, and the treble was so harsh a lot of the kids left the room. This is about an hour after he was scheduled to start.
I decided to start playing songs I knew the kids liked through itunes using my computer, soundcard, audio interface, xlr cables, and firewire cable. I spent the next three hours looking up songs on youtube, asking our ""dj"" if he had any Wiz Khalifa or Michael Jackson, and trying to take requests. I even did the new years countdown, pulled the string on the balloon drop I made, and played the midnight song. I was supposed to be one of the chaperones at the dance, but never had a free moment. The dj stood there with a panicked look on his face, and gave me the occasional nod when I played something that the audience responded to. The students quickly realized that he wasn't djing and started coming to me with requests.
No one from the company ever came that night to get the dj going, even though they had four hours to correct the problem. He guaranteed us a full refund on the night, said it was one of the worst nights of his life, and even joked that his company should have paid me for the evening.
Yesterday we received this email from the company:
""We strive for excellence at each of our events. Unfortunately, due to technical issues your event was not up to our standards.
This is not acceptable and we are very sorry.
Enclosed is a gift certificate in the amount of $200 inviting you to please use our services again. I assure you we will exceed your expectations.
I apologize and hope that you will give us another opportunity to demonstrate our excellence.
We value your patronage!
Sincerely,
Kenneth Vesey
President""
This email did contain a gift certificate for $200, however it expired at midnight last night...It was only valid for 10.5 hours.
I have tried to contact the office for well over 24 hours now. I left messages with customer service three times, left 2 messages with Ken, 2 with Roberta, 1 with Mike, and talked with Bob who is not in the correct department 2 times. To his credit, Bob did sound genuinely concerned, but no one has gotten in touch with me since I talked to him.
When you call the number it says that they are experiencing a high volume of calls and will get back to you in the order they were received. There is not a high volume of calls, this is their permanent message. They will not call you back if they don't want to.
Beware and don't prepay!
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