Bartendergirl

I gave them one star because you can’t give zero stars.
My husband and I got married back in Sept. 2009, and hired
to provide bartenders and ice for our event, upon the recommendation of our caterer and on a couple of (hard to find) reviews we read about them online. This company touts itself as being a part of the better business bureau, and they even have a little logo on their site that claims «We are 100% Reliable.» Unfortunately, that was not our experience with them on our wedding. Here’s a basic breakdown of what happened:
–They arrived late (they charge by the hour). They said this was because of «traffic»
–We did not get 2 bartenders as per our official contract. We got 1 bartender and 1 bar back (which is basically a bartender’s helper/​busser). We never asked for a bar back.
–The ice delivery truck that they said would arrive separately from their bartenders did not come. The ice was instead, brought by the bartender/​bar back in coolers… this totally caused confusion and miscommunication with the event planner and caterer. To their credit, they still brought the ice…
–They blamed my husband and I for not providing the proper supplies and ingredients to make the drinks we wanted to serve. (They gave us a shopping list a few weeeks prior, based on the menu we told them we wanted to have, and we followed that thing to a T… yet we were blamed for this).
Despite all of the above, the wedding reception went off without a hitch, due to the wonderful and diligent efforts of our event planner and our caterer, both of whom pitched in to make up for Bartendergirl’s shortcomings.
The worst part of this whole ordeal came after the event. We contacted the owner of Bartendergirl to let them know what happened and to ask that they modify the charges they made to our credit card because they were in breach of the contract. They took such a defensive stance on the whole thing. Understandably, they conducted their «investigation» on their end of what took place on that day. They told us that they would have this investigation completed by a certain deadline, which they did not meet, and we still had the full amount of the charge still sitting on our credit card balance several weeks later. So, as all responsible consumers with spines would do, we contacted our credit card company and disputed the charge. Bartendergirl didn’t like that we did this, and told us that we would be responsible for a «charge back» fee, which is a penalty that would have been placed on them by the credit card company. They also told us that we would be held liable for their attorney fees, etc if we had to take the matter to an official complaint level.
My husband and I felt so threatened and intimidated by this, especially because we don’t have a lot of money to blow on lawyers’ fees (we barely even scraped by to put this wedding together).
And besides…
WHAT REPUTABLE COMPANY WOULD DO THAT TO A CUSTOMER!!!
Especially when THEY were the ones that breached contract, and might have still tried to charge us for the full amount of services that they didn’t provide if we never said anything.
In the end, they eventually refunded us a small part of the balance. They still ended up charging us for the bar back, even though we never asked for one. Our caterer and event planner told us that they would never ever recommend Bartendergirl’s services for any of their future clients ever again.
And neither would we.