It always saddens me when a great idea or event is spoiled by needless greed of the organisers.
They have gone to great lengths to orchestrate a great event and price it just right, it is popular and many people attend all having a good time. Then they have to go and spoil it by just trying to squeeze those extra few dinars out of their guests.
What am I talking about? TribFest, of course. This function has been running twice a year for a couple of years now and is always popular. I had never managed to go before due to clash of commitments or being out of the country. I was very pleased to go last Friday for the first time and I have to say that I had a great time.
Some of the tribute acts were a bit Nah! But most of them were great and of course as the night wore on and we became less discerning they became brilliant. On a purely constructively critical note, I would have had Coldplay end the night instead of U2 as not only were they better but as an active DJ, I am pretty sure that nowadays Coldplay are more popular. It did not make a great deal of difference. Just an observation.
Anyway, back to the unnecessary greed. Like a lot of events in Bahrain, you cannot buy food and drinks directly from the vendors. You need to go through a further step of buying vouchers from another employee. I have wondered about this in the past as the organisers are paying the salary of a completely unnecessary level of staffing and they have to pay for vouchers being printed. It is a waste of precious resources.
After being there for a time, I decided I needed something to eat and drink, so I went to the vendors and decided that what I needed for my wife and I would cost BD12. So I asked the voucher lady for BD12 of vouchers. No! I could only buy BD10 or BD15 worth, but as I explained to her BD10 was not enough for what I wanted and BD15 would leave me with BD3 I did not need to spend, so if I bought BD15 would she then refund the BD3? No, there was a big sign saying no refunds.
I think that it is a contravention of consumer law in Bahrain to refuse to offer a refund for services not provided, so Bahrain Rugby Club you might want to revisit this? I wonder how many attendees woke up the next morning with a pocketful of vouchers they did not use? All these unused vouchers will now of course be pure profit for the organisers, and they know this, which is why they have the voucher system and no refunds in the first place.
Such a pity, as in general the food and drink prices were reasonable and not overpriced as at so many festivals back in the UK. Let’s just give them the benefit of the doubt and say they only did this for efficiency reasons, and having had the downside of this being pointed out to them they will fine-tune it for the next event.
Either ditch the vouchers altogether, save yourselves some wage costs and the planet, or if not you allow people to come to the Rugby Club for the next week and either spend the tokens there or get a refund. Let’s be absolutely clear about this: Every unused token on Saturday morning was money you took for undelivered services so by any measure that is not your money.