We have to say that we are absolutely appalled at the handling of the Aspley Open.
How can you cancel an event with one days notice and not directly inform everyone – especially when you have out of town and international bowlers entered in the event! We received an e-mail to a work address at 11.40pm Thursday night advising of the cancellation – not much help when we're already in bed preparing to get up at 3am to catch a flight to the event. Four of us travelled to the event from New Zealand at a cost of almost $1,000 each and showed up at the centre Saturday morning for check in only to then be advised it was cancelled.
We admit that we failed to pay a deposit which we should have paid but this has never been an issue at previous events we’ve bowled in. If the organisers were really wanting to run the event shouldn’t they have looked at this a week out from the tournament, rather than a day? Could they not have put a post on this website advising that if more entries weren’t received or deposits paid, the tournament would have to be cancelled? At least then we could have made other arrangements.
Yes, they did give us an option of bowling a tournament on the Sunday – but that was a bit of a slap in the face for those of us who only found out when we arrived to bowl!
The whole reason for us coming over for all the events was to get a aussie ranking which we planned at the start of the year and planned the events we would compete in but now we cannot bowl enough events to get that ranking. The centre cancelled the event as it may have cost them some money to hold the event, but they didn’t seem to care about the bowlers, we are only 4 but this decision caused us to waste $4000 + because of their irresponsible and late decision. If the decision had have been made earlier we could have transferred flights which would have cost us a bit but better than wasting $4000 +. We presume there must have been other bowlers who couldn’t change their plans and were out of pocket as well. I manage centres and run events in NZ and this would not have happened here, yes we have had to cancel events in the past, but we would decide a week out from the event and either commit to running the event even if entries withdrew from that point. If the decision was to cancel we would give a week’s notice and where possible I would speak to each bowler directly.
All in all we can say we have never had such a bad tournament experience in our entire bowling careers!
AJ and Julieanne
How can you cancel an event with one days notice and not directly inform everyone – especially when you have out of town and international bowlers entered in the event! We received an e-mail to a work address at 11.40pm Thursday night advising of the cancellation – not much help when we're already in bed preparing to get up at 3am to catch a flight to the event. Four of us travelled to the event from New Zealand at a cost of almost $1,000 each and showed up at the centre Saturday morning for check in only to then be advised it was cancelled.
We admit that we failed to pay a deposit which we should have paid but this has never been an issue at previous events we’ve bowled in. If the organisers were really wanting to run the event shouldn’t they have looked at this a week out from the tournament, rather than a day? Could they not have put a post on this website advising that if more entries weren’t received or deposits paid, the tournament would have to be cancelled? At least then we could have made other arrangements.
Yes, they did give us an option of bowling a tournament on the Sunday – but that was a bit of a slap in the face for those of us who only found out when we arrived to bowl!
The whole reason for us coming over for all the events was to get a aussie ranking which we planned at the start of the year and planned the events we would compete in but now we cannot bowl enough events to get that ranking. The centre cancelled the event as it may have cost them some money to hold the event, but they didn’t seem to care about the bowlers, we are only 4 but this decision caused us to waste $4000 + because of their irresponsible and late decision. If the decision had have been made earlier we could have transferred flights which would have cost us a bit but better than wasting $4000 +. We presume there must have been other bowlers who couldn’t change their plans and were out of pocket as well. I manage centres and run events in NZ and this would not have happened here, yes we have had to cancel events in the past, but we would decide a week out from the event and either commit to running the event even if entries withdrew from that point. If the decision was to cancel we would give a week’s notice and where possible I would speak to each bowler directly.
All in all we can say we have never had such a bad tournament experience in our entire bowling careers!
AJ and Julieanne
