Venue wants a bacs transfer for the deposit meaning no cover on the credit card...

Hey,

I'd be wary of this. I know that the majority of my suppliers where I have bank transfered I'm now not covered for with insurance and cant chargeback. It's a massive pain should you need to get your money back - insist on a card payment!

Sounds like they're worried they're about to fold and want to grab as much cash as possible - unless it was put in your original contract that you have to pay by BACS (or that you can't pay by credit card), they can't insist.

I understand that but we said we would cover the transaction fees. They still said no. We’re gutted. We looked at the wedding insurer you mentioned but aren’t too happy with their policies as they don’t really cover what we want.

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What is it that you were after from the policy? (as I recommend them a lot).

View quoted message When we spoke to them on the phone earlier they said if the venue went bust because of Covid they wouldn’t pay out...

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Ah ok. I wonder how they would enforce that vs poor venue management!

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Who knows! Maybe they'll just say anyone who doesn't make it over the next few years is down to Covid? Maybe we'll call again tomorrow and see if we talk to someone else and if they say the same thing. Have you used them?

Have you made it clear to the venue that you only want to pay a portion of the deposit by credit card? I thought that you had to pay £100 but actually I think you are covered as long as you pay any of it by card, providing the total value is >£100. The Covermywedding cover is better than no cover, in my opinion, but I agree that their coronavirus clause is open to interpretation, especially with regard to suppliers going out of business.

View quoted message We sent another email last night stating that we’d be happy if it was £100 by credit card and the rest via BACS. Just waiting for a reply now. I really hope they say yes!!

View quoted message Fingers crossed for you! ?

You can pay £10 via credit card and still be covered because the total full cost is over £100.

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Thank you for the info. Waiting to see if they will let us do this at the moment. Fingers crossed!

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Thank you!

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Don't take my or anyone else's word on it but you can find the full wording of section 75 with a short google. But the item has to be over £100 and a single item, you can not add up separate items from the one seller to make the total over £100.

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Thank you. As its the venue it would be well over £100 so we would be covered. Just need to hope they will agree to us paying part on the card and the rest as BACS.

In the same boat! Nightmare!

Everyone seems to wants BACS transfer from venues to suppliers. I will be asking to make CC payments in future but not really sure where we would stand if it's BACS only.

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Its so frustrating because we have no cover then if anything goes wrong their end. My fiance and I don't know what to do. Either loose the date we've dreamed of and a venue we love and postpone the wedding for another year or so, or take the risk and potentially loose the money if anyone goes bust between now and 2022, which could happen with everything going on at the moment. If we pays BACS only we'd get nothing back if anything went wrong.

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Definitely understand the frustration, but honestly, I don't think it's worth cancelling over. Lots of venues work this way and have done pre-Covid. If your wedding venue is popular I'd say it's unlikely to go under as they will be getting money in all the time for future wedding despite the cancellations for this year. Of course, there's no guarantees, but I don't think it's a disaster.

Many wedding suppliers are small one person businesses who work from home and have no facilities to take a CC.

If the supplier is a LTD company you may have issues if they cease trading because as such they will always have creditors that are above you in the queue for their money back and first in line is the tax man and after he has has his money there may not be much left for everyone else.

A sole trader (non ltd company ) on the other hand cannot go "bust " because they are personally liable and they would need to be declared bankrupt before you would not get any money back. If they are being slippery then it should be an easy job through the small claims court.

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So this is for our venue which is a LTD company. It seems every venue I talk to is doing the same...but its a lot of money to loose if anything went wrong. The original deposit was £2500. Then they changed it to £4500 when I asked why and said that it didn't seem very fair they changed it back to £2500 but it makes me worry they may have a cash flow problem...I don't know what to do!

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They said no

Our venue is the same - demanded everything on BACS. We went ahead and paid the deposit but I'm getting increasingly anxious at putting more cash into them over the next year. Our wedding is Nov 2021 and if we cancel with a year out (by Nov 2020) we get our deposit back aside from a £650 admin fee which I kind of think is fair enough.

We also have £850 down on an accommodation deposit which we might not get back. So torn of what to do as we will be liable for more and more as we go down the line and there's no wedding insurance .

Starting to consider pulling out and losing the cash and then just waiting until everything blows over.

View quoted message It’s all such a risk at the moment! I understand that they may not be set up to take card payments but it’s hard when there’s no compromise. One of our vendor’s (not the venue, much smaller amount) couldn’t take a card payment but he did halve the amount and tell us in writing that we can have a full refund if we have to cancel due to Covid.

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Exactly. We offered to pay the card fees, to only pay £150 on credit card but all a dead end. Problem is all other venues are saying the same. I spoke to Martin Lewis about it today and he said you just have to wait because its a massive risk otherwise. But it feels like putting life on hold. I just don't know what to do.

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It's the anxiety thats a killer. I just wish everything was back to normal :-( We wouldn't get any of our deposit back if we cancel but my main concern is if the venue goes bust. We'd loose £2,500!! My fiancé has said maybe we have to wait a couple more years but I know by that time certain family members probably will no longer be with us and it feels like we have to put life on hold for longer too.

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Have to confess I do not know much about section 75 from the suppliers/ venue side of the fence. But if you take out the admin CC charge issue im not sure why taking a CC payment is a cash flow problem for the venue because they still get their money.

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They've said BACS only. We've offered to pay the CC charges, we've said just let us pay £100 on CC and the rest BACS but they just say no.

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This is kind of where my head is at at the moment. I just don't want to spend the whole year in the lead up to our wedding in perpetual anxiety about whether we lose cash or will be able to do the wedding. Equally I don't want to completely put my life on hold until there is more stability because that could be a long time.

I'm leaning towards pulling money out though as you can always plan a smaller cheaper wedding fairly quickly - enabling you to be agile to what is going on at the time or if you're happy to wait for a bigger wedding I guess you just have to be flexible about potentially losing dates/having to wait longer than you want.

I'm also just concerned about putting down more deposits and then once I'm a year out I'm going to want to book bands etc.

Even the guidance from CMA is just guidance - so I think you could end up in arguments with venues regardless of what happens.

I would also say I don't think chargebacks are complete certainty either. We tried to reverse some flights with AMEX and they gave us temporary credit but said the airline could contest it at any point in the future so even that didn't feel a secure refund. I could be wrong about that but I'm not sure I would rely on chargebacks in the event of things going wrong.

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Its a vicious circle because venues are trying to protect themselves -- which ultimately protects the couples, but couples want to protect themselves which ultimately has the opposite effect.

Confidence on both sides has been lost. It seems to me that there needs to be some sort of government backed guarantee scheme so that venues get their deposits but if they go bust then the couples get their money back. And potentially the gov (tax payer) will not have to pay anything because the venue will not go bust because they are receiving a normal deposit cash flow.

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Now that sounds like something we could all work with! You seriously should forward that idea to a local MP!

I had the same concerns but we paid the deposit to our venue in the end. However, ours was only £500 as we went with a place that is venue only and you book your own caterers, bar etc. Just figured we can't put life on hold and someone else would eventually just book the date we wanted if we didn't go for it. Our wedding isn't until 2022 so we are holding off from booking anything else until we can get insurance. It is not a great situation.