Last week I learned that some of the money from the DC Trip was witheld by the travel company. The $60 first payment was retained for overhead costs of Music Travel Consultants. The company assured us that that $60 deposit was usable as a trip credit on a future trip, but that does not help our familes right now.
Thanks to the collaboration of the Paint Valley Band Boosters and Music Travel Consultants, we are now getting that $60 refunded to all travelers. The refund will be coming by Music Travel Consultants by check or card refund. I will let you know the timeline and specifics.
The solution involved the boosters sending a large check to MTC for the amount retained. MTC then is keeping that check as a group depoisit (not tied to any individual account) and refunding the individual accounts where the funds were orriginally retained. This way MTC is able to keep their overhead, our Paint Valley families get back all of the funds put in, the funds are not "lost" as they can be applied to our next trip, and the Band Boosters are able to fulfill their mission again to support our Paint Valley band families. I'd like to thank Jeff Buchanan and Michael Gray from Music Travel Consultants and the Paint Valley Band boosters for collaborating on a creative solution that meets the needs of all parties.
And thank you, PV band familes, all for your patience in this process. And special thank you to the familes who let me know about this error so we could step in and correct it. It has always been our mission to be worthy stewards of our band family's finances. We will never travel unless we fell it is safe, educational, and fiscally responsible.
Please let me know if there is anything else we can do to help.
Thank you again,
Nicholas Turon
[email protected]