Wedding band gone AWOL

[violetanemone]

We'd booked a band for our wedding which has been postponed twice since Spring 2020 - due to Covid. Band were great and kindle moved the date for us both times with no extra costs. All agreed for Spring 2022 which looks to be going ahead.

Now the wedding is coming up in less than three months. We emailed all our suppliers in early December to confirm they were still coming.

The band haven't replied and it's now over 6 weeks. We've emailed again multiple times, called the number on their website, even found the number of their agent too (who we didn't book through) and tried to contact them to no avail, no one is responding.

We can only think that the band has probably split up?? They are holding a £500 deposit from us :(

We've been in touch with another band who are free and we want to book them to get it sorted - but if we do is there any chance of getting this deposit back? Where would stand legally, does anyone know??

TIA

Really don't know how you would go about recovering the money, sorry @violetanemone. Did you have any kind of contract?

Do you have wedding insurance? Might be worth giving them a call, they could advise the best. Does the band have social media. People tend to reply when you publicly asked them what's going on! Good luck

Thanks for the replies. @Yuppie20 good shout about the insurance. I looked for them on social media but couldn't find anything!

@BunnyRuddington Yes a very basic contract but it doesn't cover this scenario. The thing is we are still a couple of months away from the wedding so they could in theory turn up on the day with no prior communication with us, and expect to play and be paid.

It's just the fact they haven't contacted us in 6 weeks is worrying us.

Did you pay by BACS or was it credit card? You might be able to get it back if it was via a card.

Do you have a physical address? Can you send a letter to them? Be sure to have your return address on the back