Tips for Sticking to Your Guns (or Swords) When It Comes to the Bill

Posted on October 22, 2008 4 Comments

A few weeks ago, my friends and I threw a fabulous pirate-themed 30th birthday party for my besty, Miss K, a tiny – yet fiesty – brunette with a quick wit and a penchant for tap dancing and shoe stealing. She’s the greatest, so we went all out and threw her a reasonably priced, all you can drink gathering at a popular dive bar in Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood. (OK, maybe not ALL out. But we did purchase a pirate pinata and had hats, swords, eye patches and name tags of famous pirates to wear. Mine was “The Dread Pirate Roberts.” The bar tender didn’t get it.)

The party went swimmingly, until about three hours into the “all you can drink” wristband deal, when the bar manager brought the bill over. We were expecting to see a charge of $150 plus food, because that’s what my friend S agreed to when she booked the room. Instead, the charge was $300 plus food. “Crap,” we thought; we were screwed.

How could this happen? We went over the details in our head. Initially, after talking with dive bar owners at several other places in the city, we selected this one because S had a close friend who knew the owner and could get us a good deal for the party. We put down a $150 deposit to hold the room, which would be kept if we didn’t get 40 people to buy a $30 wristband.

Only now the owner was saying that we had to purchase all the wristbands that we didn’t sell up to 40. There were a couple more details that aren’t important enough to note, but bottom line, the owner wanted $300 and we were only prepared to pay $150. We were convinced it wasn’t a miscommunication: as S said, “Why would I have booked this bar if it wasn’t the best deal? We talked to so many other places.”

S and I wondered to each other whether we should just make it easy and pay the extra $150. After all, it was only $75 extra for each of us. We resigned ourselves to being angry and paying the bill, but asked our lawyer friend (LC) for her opinion first.

“What does the contract say?” LC asked us. S said that she never signed a contract. I thought that was weird, given that I plan a lot of events and you NEVER book an event without a contract. LC said that was ridiculous. So she summoned up the owner, brought us into a staircase/hallway setting (very intimidating) and told him we were only paying $150 and advised him to start using contracts. And it worked. We paid our $150, signed the bill and took our party elsewhere.

Granted, we had to agree to not come back to the bar, but given the lame-ness of the owner, we were OK with that. I doubt we’ll miss it.

What did I learn? Well, here are a few tips for your next party:
1) Don’t book without signing a contract. The written document should have all the specifics of your payment detailed on the page. There should be no ambiguity as to what you’re responsible for covering.

2) Stick to your guns (or swords) when negotiating. S and I were ready to fold, but LC had a few tricks up her sleeve. For instance, she knew that if she said, “We’ll pay $150 now and I’ll give you my card to discuss the rest of the bill on Monday,” that he wouldn’t follow up. She knew that it takes $200 to file the paperwork (or something like that), and that the money in question was only $150… legal follow-up would cost the bar more than not.

3) If you have two people planning the same party, make sure one of you is the consistent point of contact for any particular venor. Otherwise, your lines could get crossed and you might miss out on little details (like contracts).

4) If the bar kicks you out because of their contracting shortcomings, don’t be salty. There’s another one right down the street, and they’ll let you whack a pirate-pinata using a red stilleto heel to rain down candy all over their floor, much to the delight of all the other patrons. And really, that’s way more fun than standing around haggling over the bill, anyway.

Category: Money

Comments