My fiancé and I are living in the UK and signed a non-refundable contract with Andrea for our wedding in January 2020, before covid hit.
After three failed attempts to have our Sooke wedding day and no end in sight we informed Andrea that we had to cancel our wedding as travel restrictions have prevented my fiancé and many of our guests from traveling to Canada for over a year. She initially offered to take our photos at a future date which we declined because we are based in the UK and do not require photography anymore as we are no longer getting married in Canada and have no plans to travel to Canada together anytime soon. We enquired about a refund of our deposit minus any expenses and time spent on us, she initially refused to refund anything and after asking her to reconsider she offered to refund us $200 by the end of February when she had enough funds to pay us.
It is now over 3 months since this money was promised to us and we have yet to receive it. Andrea has not informed us when she intends to follow through with returning this money and has not responded to the last few e-mails that we have sent her.
All other vendors that we signed non-refundable contracts with empathized with our situation and promptly refunded the majority of our deposits. This is a stark contrast to our experience when dealing with Andrea.
Andrea is clearly a talented photographer and we would’ve really liked for her to photograph our wedding but we were disappointed by the fact that she has not stayed true to her word to return some of the deposit and by her lack of communication.
At a time when we have such little control over what is going on, one of the few things we can control is how we treat other people. In our opinion, Andrea has chosen to deal with this matter very poorly and has not displayed any empathy towards our situation whatsoever.