Last weekend, two events were scheduled to take place at The Loft, a pub and events space located on Gorge Road, attached to the Days Inn.
Hidden Victoria is the company responsible for booking and promoting the events.
On August 26th and 27th, ticket holders who were excited to attend an ABBA and Taylor Swift experience night were disappointed to find out the shows were not happening and staff at the location were unaware of any event taking place.
“When I arrived at the Inn at 12:55 p.m., I met several other people in the lobby, and we were all told the same thing at the front desk: there was no drag show, ABBA or otherwise, taking place in the hotel or in the pub,” said Iris Gray, who hoped to see the ABBA show and had purchased an advanced ticket.
“In fact, the pub was closed. The front desk staff had not even heard of Hidden Events or the ABBA Drag Show.”
“The same company, Hidden Events, was also promoting a Taylor Swift Experience for today, August 27th. The same thing happened. People bought tickets and arrived at the venue, just to find that there was no such event,” she added.
Importantly, Hidden Victoria puts on several themed experience-based events such as the Alice in Wonderland event at Senora. These are the first two events which have not happened as scheduled and become of public concern.
A Hidden Victoria spokesperson, Shelley Allen, told Victoria Buzz that although they’ve been accused of being fraudulent or scamming people, they simply had a communication breakdown.
“Unfortunately, there has been an internal error with these events. We have a new team member and they accidentally put potential venues in place of confirmed venues, which meant that events were sent to media with the wrong addresses,” Allen explained.
“We were made aware of this last week and have been working to correct the issues which have arisen from this mistake.”
Hidden Victoria says the ABBA show has since been cancelled while the Taylor Swift themed event has been postponed to October 28th, but will still take place at The Loft.
Allen sent Victoria Buzz several email receipts showing that six people had bought tickets to the ABBA event and nine had bought tickets to the Taylor Swift show.
The hopeful attendees should have received either cancellation or postponement emails from Hidden Victoria on August 20th and 24th respectively for these two events.
Allen also says that in the emails sent to customers, options were provided to either attain a ticket to one of their several other events, a credit to a future event of their choice or they could ask for a refund, which Hidden Victoria says they would be happy to provide.
We deeply regret the confusion caused and have put further internal procedures in place to ensure that this cannot happen again,” Allen told Victoria Buzz.
Despite these claims, Gray, who was just one individual that purchased a ticket online has no such email in her inbox or her spam folder.
Allen told Victoria Buzz, if their customers did not recieve any such email, they could reach out to Hidden Victoria by emailing hello@explorehidden.com for a customer service representative.
