For anyone who follows my posts, or is curious as to what exactly happened, I made a post about 2 weeks ago outlining all of the things that went wrong during our wedding; mainly because I just needed to get it all off my chest. My biggest frustration came from the horrific job our DJ did. Like ruined the last 3 hours of our wedding horrible (again, if you want to know the whole story, I invite you to read my previous post: Everything That Went Wrong).
Anyway, after writing bad reviews on his WeddingWire Vendor page as well as his Yelp page, he immediately contacted me via email with a $150 gift certificate to Amazon and asked if I would remove the reviews. I responded by first thanking him for the gift card, but also outlining everything that went horribly wrong and I told him that I did not feel it was right to remove my reviews because other couples had a right to know what kind of service they could receive by booking him; good or bad. He then countered, asking what kind of refund he could give to have the reviews taken down. We decided a 50% refund was appropriate, we would edit the reviews to reflect the refund, but would not fully remove them. This is when things get a little weird I guess...
He responded with a SUPER long email, telling us how his mother is battling a rare disease and his mind was preoccupied and that's why he messed up so much (btw, he's not an independent DJ, he works for a company, so he could have sent a substitute DJ if his mind was that preoccupied). He included photos of his mom in the hospital as "proof" which kind of made me feel uncomfortable. He said he felt bad about how poorly our wedding went and he loses sleep over it every night; *insert eyeroll* not believing he loses sleep over our wedding night. Anywho, he says he's giving us a full refund, as well as letting us keep the extra Amazon gift card he already sent, and he asks again that we understand his situation and take the reviews down.
Well, we received the full refund, and because we are compassionate people who have both dealt with sick parents (3 years ago my father underwent a Stemcell Transplant for cancer and 2 years ago my father-in-law received a heart transplant, so we get how overwhelming that can be). So, I removed both of my negative reviews as he requested.
Today I made the mistake of going on his WeddingWire and Yelp pages and now I'm just angry again. Other brides reviewed him for weddings that happened days after ours and the week after, and they all gush about how great he was and how amazing he made their wedding. It makes me so so angry. The bride who got married the day after me had an incredible experience, but here I am with soured memories of my first dance with both my husband and father, as well as not fun memories of the entire dancing portion of our reception. I'm just soooo mad that he literally only messed up our wedding day. Now I'm feeling like I should have taken the refund AND left the reviews up. Ugh.
Someone please tell me there will be a day I get over the DJ disaster and only remember all of the great things that happened my wedding day, because right now, I can only seem to focus on how our reception was ruined by him