wizardworld is stealing from budding artists
hey all! this is going to wind up being a long post, so please bear with me. a few artist friends of mine signed up to table at wizardworld, a popular convention in chicago. they paid $400 for their table, and when the 2020 date was cancelled, wizardworld refused to refund them their money.
my friend noah (@crow_durany_art on instagram) posted this as the first in a thread of updates regarding the situation.
Hey all. Me and some other artists could really use your guys help in an easy way. Several of my colleagues and I paid hundreds of dollars to booth at Wizard World this year and it was obviously cancelled due to the virus. We understand that. However, we have all been reaching out for months about getting our money back and they didnt respond until the very last moment telling us that it would be online and we would have booths next year. As none of us are interested in this and are all requesting full refunds the company has completely ghosted us. No emails back, no word on whats happening with the online store this weekend, nothing. We all paid $400+ for small booths that they are just taking.
A small way you can help is attack their social media platforms until they are forced to respond. If you want to help even more you can spam the emails [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected]
We could use all the help we can get to get responses on our refunds as us small artists are especially struggling with our own businesses. Thank you.
wizardworld posted this on their facebook page in response:
We would like to address those artists that are being affected by the postponement of our shows. There are no plans to hold a full online convention, and this is not to be confused with the virtual panels we have been holding. All of the physical events that have been affected by this pandemic have all been postponed to future dates.
Please know that we have been in contact with each and every one of our paid artists and exhibitors for well over a month, and they have been informed that we would be moving their payments, as per their registration to the 2021 date. This is how many conventions operate.
We are in uncharted times. And we are working as best we can to give our artist community opportunities online during this time with the Wizard World Vault. For the artists and exhibitors taking advantage of this - they are bringing in revenue. We automatically transferred artist's payments to the those future set dates or events, when we are hopefully able to enjoy physical conventions again.
As a sign of good faith in you investing in us, we would like to offer a discount for any artist registration for any 2021 show, or Chicago 2022
We appreciate you bring your concerns to [email protected] as opposed to social media posts, so we can address them individually.
Thank you and stay safe.
noah followed up with this response:
Hey all: heres why this post is 100% BS 1. Wizard World emailed me ONCE for my 10+ emails sent from april til now and all it said was that it was being rescheduled a full year from now. That is not ‘in contact’ with artists. They only responded to emails when we put them on blast. 2. That full year from now is not a ‘reschedule’ it is next years annual event and not what we paid for. We paid for an in person 2020 event that we are not recieving due to a CANCELLATION. We are entitled to refunds. 3. Their online “wizworld vault” that they claim artists are recieving revenue from is also untrue. I have never once been contacted asking what i sell, my inventory, or payment options. It is also NOT WHAT I PAID FOR. An online little store does not compare to the interactions we artists rely on at booths. 4. This is absolutely not how conventions operate. For example, the lovely oddities expo kept in contact with us and gave us a choice: prepaid booths at next years event OR a refund of whatever you put down for a booth. THAT is proper business practice and wizard worlds is a perfect example of shady and overall just shitty people.
REFUND YOUR ARTISTS WIZARD WORLD
@wizardworlddigital-blog is still refusing to refund, and blocking anyone who calls them out on social media. please help my friends out and support budding, independent artists by calling out wizardworld, and/or considering checking out their instagrams and websites so you can support artists directly.
a few artists who have been robbed by this convention include:
@crow_durany_art on instagram, whose website is crowduranyart.com
@pale.artist on instagram, whose website is paleartist.com
@calculations on instagram, whose website is winslowdumaine.com
@awinthrop_art on instagram, whose website is awinthrop.com
