As of late, we have had numerous rumors flying around regarding the upcoming Rites of Darkness festival. We would like to fully disclose what has been happening so people can know the truth from our side. A few months ago, we started sales through Paypal. We've had good history with Paypal and felt this was the best way to go especially with the numerous international people planning to come to the show. People with experience with Paypal knows that sometimes, accounts get locked and frozen because Paypal feels it seems fit and thinks a certain account is illegitimate. Well our account was one of the unfortunate ones to get locked. Though we could receive sales, we were unable to do anything with our account. Including taking the money out to go back into the show.
We worked hard on legitimizing our account including drafting them flight schedules (Antaeus, Anatomia, Impetuous Ritual, etc), venue contracts, receipts, past history with the first ROD festivals and more. But they kept a closed ear on our pleas and kept assuring us that the account just needs time to be unlocked. We trusted their word which was never honored. If the amount was low, we wouldn't have stressed it out as much as we have but the account was roughly around $53,000 - a high number that was gonna heavily go back into the festival. We had two choices to go through with Paypal; either refund every customer (nearly about 450 transactions) or wait 180 days from the date of the festival for them to release our funds. We kept working on legal arbitration, different avenues, and even the possibility of refunding all customers but before we could get to that point, we had someone in another Paypal office look at our account, review it and has since cleared our account to use.
And with through that mess, we've had to encounter some cancellations as of late including Urfaust and Butcher ABC. Both had important work obligations they couldn't pass up and we tried to work around them as much as possible but we couldn't come to a deal. And the latest cancellations that we have encountered that we regret to announce are Sargeist and Behexen. Again, we tried to come to a working schedule around their new jobs but nothing came to fruition. We understand the bands on our festival have personal lives they must attend to and when an opportunity comes up they can't pass up, we can only do so much. We completely understand if this sways peoples decision to come to the show but we hope to let everyone know before false rumors come out. We already have 3 replacements in the works and are just waiting for them to confirm by tonight and this week. If you've bought a single day ticket to see these specific bands on the schedules, feel free to email us and we can work on refunding you. We will NOT refund any 3 day passes or prefest tickets since we feel we've built a strong enough line up to have people enough variety to choose from.
