Fantasia Sucks

In January, Kelly, my mom and I attended a wedding show where we gathered information on myriad companies who supply wedding help and entertainment. One such cluster of companies was the DJs. One of those companies, Fantasia Sight & Sound, coordinated the mic system and music for the wedding show itself. We heard this was a reputable company and decided that their DJs seemed to do a good job with the wedding show, so we decided this was the company to hire for our wedding.

Kelly called the company and spoke with a man named Kurt. Kurt asked Kelly if he had filled out the yellow request form. Kelly explained to him that we didn't have any paperwork, that we were calling him basically on a referral from someone else. Kurt took our address and said he would get that in the mail because that was the first step in the DJ process.

A few weeks later, when we had not heard from Kurt nor had we received anything from him, Kelly called him back. He said he still had us penciled in for May 29 but that we needed to do the request form and other paperwork, since it was getting so close to the date of the event. Kelly told him we didn't have anything. Kurt told him not to worry about the yellow request form and that if we just sent him the $150 deposit he would in turn send us the contract and music planning guide needed for him to do our wedding. All we had to do was enclose a note with our $150 check reminding him that we needed the paperwork. I wrote the check that night and sent it out the following morning.

A week later we receive in the mail from Kurt (with our names spelled wrong on the envelope) a receipt for the $150 deposit and a hand-written note from him stating that he didn't have any paperwork started on us and that we needed to give him a call to set up a time to meet and get that taken care of. It is at this time that I assume we are dealing with a moron.

Kelly calls Kurt that afternoon to set up the meeting he requested. Kurt said that when we come to the meeting we need to bring the contract and music planning guide. Kelly explains to him that we do not have any of the paperwork. Kurt gets our address again in order to mail it to us.

The following week, we receive another mailing from Kurt (again, with our names spelled wrong). In this mailing is a letter addressed to Laura, dated September 13, 2004, with Kelly's name spelled incorrectly at the top above a partially filled-out address (as per standard business letter etiquette). Also in this letter was a contract and the alleged music planning guide. Kelly and I sat down the following night to go over the information. I noticed that not only was the letter addressed to someone named Laura wrong on name/address information, but that the entire letter was rife with grammatical and mechanical errors. I realize I wasn't reading his letter as an English teacher, but I was reading it as someone wanting to hire him - a supposed professional. Then we examined the music planning guide. It was so entirely confusing we could barely make sense of it. He had weird names for things, excluded half of what we were expecting, expected to do twice as much as we wanted, and asked if he would be receiving free food at the reception during one of his breaks. We filled it out the best we could and decided to leave the rest of it to fill out during our meeting with him.

I called Kurt the next afternoon to set up a meeting time with him. This was two days ago. He took on a bossy air and chastised me for not setting up a meeting sooner. Then told me he could meet me at 5 p.m. the next day. At this point, I am firmly established on the fact that he is a moron.

When I dressed myself on Wednesday I made sure to look good and wear clothes that made me feel powerful. I do not like complaining about people or telling them to their faces that I think they're a moron, which is what I planned to do at the meeting with Kurt (although nicely). I tend to back down on business affairs because I don't really like the business side of things. That's Kelly's job. But it was me going to this meeting alone and I wanted to be prepared to be strong but not bitchy.

I arrived at his house which doubled as his office at about 4:45. I wanted to make sure I was a little early because I wanted him to know I wasn't just a young thing without a clue and because I didn't know how long this would take and I had somewhere to be by 6:30. I walked up his steps and knocked on the door. He came to the entrance and spoke to me through the screen door.

"Hi, I'm here to meet with Kurt at 5. Is that you?" I asked.

"Uh, yea. Um, you're 15 minutes early," he said with slight exasperation while looking at his watch.

"Is that a problem?"

"Well, yea. I'm just finishing up with a meeting with someone else," he responded.

"Do you need me to come back later?" I'm astounded at this point.

"Actually, yea. Just give me five, maybe 10 more minutes." And then he turned around and walked away.

Not knowing quite what just happened, I turned back to the street and walked back to my car. I called Kelly at work to explain the exchange with him. At this point, he already knows I think Kurt is a moron, but encourages me to remain patient. I tell him I am but that I don't feel comfortable at all with this guy. I mean, wouldn't most business people invite the next client in and make them comfortable in another room until their meeting is over? After all, he's asking us to pay him $100 an hour. Wouldn't you, as a business owner, want me to think that paying you that much is worth it to me?

Just then the clients leave and he comes out to wave me in. I walk in and he introduces himself and shakes my hand and offers me a seat on the couch. Even though I had told him on the phone the day before that Kelly would be unable to attend this meeting, he was perplexed at the fact that my fiance was not there. He asked immediately for the signed contract and rest of our payment. I told him I hadn't signed the contract yet because I had questions. He looked at me out of the corner of his eye.

I asked him what the chances were of us getting our $150 back if we decided at this point to go with another option, perhaps another DJ or perhaps not one at all. Immediately, his tone turned bitter and biting as he explained to me his company's policy of the $150 guaranteeing the date and that he was doing Kelly a favor because he works for public television of holding the date without the yellow request form. I still don't know what Kelly's job has to do with it, but OK.

I was getting ready to tell him OK, I understand, and just sign the lousy contract and go with it. Kelly and I agreed that we'd rather have a temperamental, grammer-ignorant DJ than none at all and with less than three weeks left until the wedding, we didn't think we would be able to find anyone else.

Instead, Kurt asked why we would consider going with someone else in the first place. I told him that it was more of a question of his level of professionalism and the way we had been handled up to that point. I told him that correspondence with him had been difficult and that he hadn't even payed enough attention to us to get our names correct. I told him about the letter from last September addressed to Laura, which he promptly snatched out of my hands. He told me that that wasn't even his fault, that it was Kelly's fault for not turning in the yellow request form. He said that if he had received the correct paperwork in a timely fashion then that wouldn't have been a problem. I told him how Kelly had asked for the paperwork and never received it. I tried to explain to him that we would like to use him for our wedding and that was exactly why I was meeting with him - to get a feel for him and to give him a chance in person to clean the standard he set for himself through his correspondence so that we could be assured that he would handle our event with the care and professionalism that he advertised about.

I don't think he heard me, though, because at this point he was already very angry and yelling at me. He threw his hands up and yelled "Fine! If you want to go with someone else, that's your choice! I'll just give you your money back!" and got up and left the room. He returned with his ledger and wrote out a check for $150. He handed it to me and said "You may want to check with the Better Business Bureau to ask them about our good reputation with them. Good luck with your wedding."

I stepped out the door as he closed it sharply behind me. I stood there for a moment again, unsure of what had just happened.

A couple weeks ago I talked to my cousin who told me she has friends who own a DJ company in town. At the time I thought we had a secure, mentally stable DJ so I didn't think anything else about it. I called to talk to her last night and find out which company it was. I figured that maybe if I used my cousin's friend then they would be nice, not get angry and throw me out. I contacted them and they turned out to be available and since we have a friend in common they're going to work with us even though it's last minute and they already have an event that day. I actually talked to my cousin's husband because she wasn't home. He talked to the DJ friend and told them the story and assured them that I wasn't some crazed bridezilla who is classically pissy toward DJs.

That is super long so I hope you made it through. The point is, if you're in need of a DJ, don't call Fantasia. The gal from Sapphire, the company we're going through now, said that Kurt is a wedding prima donna and thinks he controls All on the wedding circuit. I think she's right.