Global Force Wrestling is receiving some bad publicity this week as a blogger who purchased tickets to GFW live events in Texas found out that the shows were canceled with no real announcement, and getting a refund has been a hassle.
The following is the announcement GFW made on their website three days ago, quietly revealing the fact that the shows in Texas were being postponed:
Global Force Wrestling, the San Antonio Missions and the Round Rock Express have decided to postpone the GFW Grand Slam Tour events scheduled for later this month in Texas. Due to multiple conflicts in scheduling plus announcements that will be revealed over the next few weeks, GFW and the Texas clubs felt it was best to reschedule the events for the 2016 Grand Slam Tour. Ticket refunds can be obtained through the Missions’ and Express’ box offices.
“Global Force Wrestling has made a promise to our fans to present the highest quality wrestling action at all of our Grand Slam events,” GFW founder and CEO Jeff Jarrett said. “As a new brand in the entertainment marketplace, it is imperative not only to deliver but to exceed customer expectations. We are committed to our friends and fans in Texas, and we look forward to scheduling San Antonio and Round Rock on next year’s Grand Slam Tour.”
Here is part of the blog that “Skillcrane” wrote. It’s worth noting that after posting the open letter to Jeff Jarrett, a GFW representative contacted the man and the update he wrote afterwards is also available below.
Fast forward to August of 2015, when tickets for the Texas ballpark tour went on sale. Anyone (such as myself) who purchased tickets to any of these events did so as a leap of faith. With absolutely no information other than a time & a place, purchasing a ticket was doing so out of the part of themselves that wishes the best for the promotion & wants them to succeed. I was able to go online, select my tickets, & within a couple of minutes make my purchase. I felt good doing so, knowing that I was contributing to the growth of the new promotion & hopefully helping to inspire others who wanted to bring their promotions to my city in the future.
Fast forward to last night. I was watching the Scenic City Invitational & two of the announced GFW roster (Moose & Kongo Kong) were facing each other, so I decided to check the website to see if they finally got around to announcing the actual wrestlers who would be appearing at the event, hoping Kong & Moose were in that lineup.
Instead, what I saw was an announcement that the next shows were in October, with not even a mention of the Texas dates on the site. This was somewhat disconcerting considering I had purchased tickets for an event in September. I looked through the News link, the ticket link, etc, & saw no information at all on these dates, making me wonder if I had imagined the whole thing all along. A quick Google search (again, it is hard to accept that I have to Google information that is buried somewhere on the site) pointed me to an article that announced that the Texas dates have been canceled under mysterious reasons (“multiple scheduling conflicts & announcements that will be revealed over the next few weeks”), & that GFW was “committed to our friends and fans in Texas” & they look forward to seeing us next year instead. No email saying “hey, we realize you already threw down money for this show, so here is your refund” or anything like that. The fact is that I had to dig for information instead of having the company proactively come out & contact any of us who bothered to support them in the first place.
Now for the next source of contention, which is how the refunds are being handled. As I mentioned, the actual purchase of the tickets was done from the comfort of a computer terminal & required little to no effort, taking only a couple of minutes to complete. To get my money back, though, I am expected to drive 1 hour round trip (assuming there is absolutely no traffic) to the South side of town & go to the Missions ballpark box office. Keep in mind that the event itself was not even scheduled in this location, but rather a different ballpark located much more conveniently to my home. So the expectation from this promotion that I supported is I make a 1 hour+ round trip drive, plus gas, plus paying for parking to get into the parking lot of the box office itself. I will actually lose money because I made the mistake to support GFW. This is completely unacceptable in my mind in 2015.
Beyond the inconvenience & expense of getting the refund, it also leaves a very bad taste in my mouth that I tried to support an upstart promotion & was burned by them as a payback for that support. Of the 200 or so people who were going to show up the first time around, how many of them do you expect will return the second time after being burned, when we have the opportunity to see this glorious non-promotion again? My guess would be much less than the first go round. Now instead of fulfilling their obligations, they are spinning things like they are doing us all a favor by allowing us the opportunity to see them in 2016, but what they don’t realize is if you burn someone once they won’t get duped into trying to show support again.
Here is the update he posted:
EDITOR’S NOTE: After posting this, someone from GFW reached out & asked me to call the box office for the refund. As I was going on information posted by GFW themselves saying that I would have to seek refunds in person, I assumed this information was correct as it was in the press release. It turns out that unlike GFW, the San Antonio Missions organization has their shit together, as they have set up an auto refund for the event that should start being credited some time next week. This does help a bit, but my original feelings toward the promotion still stand.