[update] Wedding Day Of Coordinator Cancelled The Day Before Our Wedding

original post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/1nhr3o6/wedding_day_of_coordinator_cancelled_the_day/

Location: Pennsylvania

Hi everyone, just wanted to provide an update on my previous post now that everything is resolved. Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to comment. We read through every one and it really helped us decide what to do. Now, on to the update:

1. We decided to email a (long) list of the ways we believed they breached our contract, including not making every (any?) effort to find a replacement if an unexpected circumstance arose, and asked for a full refund within 7 days.
   
2. They responded saying they would only be able to provide 50% refund after we signed the non-disparagement agreement (good job to those of you who thought they would eventually ask for us to sign it)
   
3. We responded saying we would sign the non-disparagement agreement if we were provided a 75% refund. As one commentator suggested, our plan was to then write a non-review review ("we cannot say more publicly but please DM if you are thinking of working with this company") in our local wedding facebook groups.
   
4. They responded saying that due to still needing to pay their staff despite the cancellation they could only provide a 50% refund but that we were welcome to do a venmo dispute for the full amount and they would honor it.
   
5. We did file a venmo dispute (we had paid using goods and services) and included all of the correspondence, original contract, etc. The day of coordinator must have promptly non-contested with venmo because they ruled in our favor the next day! They did reach out and asked us to confirm that we received the money, we responded saying we did, and have not had any further contact.

Since we did not sign any non-disparagement agreement, we are planning to post a review. A few of you suggested that they might have double booked but we didn't see anything on their socials as of today. I guess we'll never know if they did have a family emergency and didn't have their supposedly confirmed backup available or if it was some kind of a scam. But at least we got our full money back and don't need to worry about them suing us for defamation since we never signed anything!