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The following is an open letter to Andy Preston, following his no-show at his breakfast meeting I tried to attend this morning.
Dear Andy Preston,
I'm writing, following your no-show at your Key Note Breakfast meeting this morning at Regus in Brindley Place on the subject of LinkedIn. I had booked on this when you first advertised it, via LinkedIn, and received confirmation from yourselves by phone and email of my booking.
I was very disappointed, therefore, that having invested time and money to attend your event at 7am this morning to find that the reception at the Regus building knew nothing of the event. I might have thought I had venues, times and dates wrong, but no, there was another delegate awaiting your arrival, plus I was still able to go onto LinkedIn and view the event which had no notes or information regarding any cancellation.
As a social media expert and as you were speaking on and using LinkedIn to promote this event, you will be aware of its potential to be a double edged sword and, therefore, I'm inviting your response in the public domain as to why you didn't use social media to inform me of the event's cancellation. At the very least you could have updated the event's title on LinkedIn to say "Cancelled:" even late the night before as I did check before leaving home. You could have also used LinkedIn's messaging tools or even, as you took my phone number and email, used those old fashioned methods to contact me!
I would like to point out my costs in attending your, non-happening event are as follows:
- 20 mile round trip = £9
- parking charges = £1.20
- hour of my wasted time from office (7:30am-8:30am) = £55
- my morning hour lost with my 8 month old son (6:30am - 7:30am) = priceless and irretrievable
I look forward to your response. Regus, with whom I had left a card at reception, have contacted me to apologise, but it appears details of my booking had not been passed onto them from yourselves.
Ian O'Donnell
(Director of Real Point)
Posted by Ian ODonnell
I’ve just had a call from Andy Preston, who was very apologetic. It appears that it was a bit of a case of too many cooks! The event was organised in conjunction with several parties/providers, and the person who did the cancelling didn’t get all the relevant lists to do so.
However, Andy took full responsibility despite, it appears, not being entirely his organisations fault and has made several good, alternative offers to recompense myself. In the end a good example of how handling the problem well can turn a bad situation good!