A funny thing happened to today as I was going to a class that I signed up for earlier this year. Everything had been paid for and all too. As I arrived, I noticed something was odd as the building was completely dark. It appeared that the place was closed. That was odd and my first assumption was that I was simply in the wrong building. Part of my reason for thinking too is that the building is actually part of a public community centre where to my knowledge they rent the space out to use. It should be cheaper than trying to rent space yourself. Although, keep in mind I am not exactly sure what was going on specifically.
So, I then went to the main desk of the community centre to try and see what was happening. The lady phoned someone who was in-charge of the class and apparently they rented the space out to a film production to film a TV show. Even she was surprised and mentioned they weren’t told anything. Now my assumption is they get a lot of money as people often get paid a lot by productions to use one’s space/property. Kind of weird from a business point of view since this is a community centre I thought.
Because of this though that means they did not and could not fulfill the agreement they had with people like myself who signed up for the class and got no notice of a change. Again, my assumption is they got paid to give up the space where if so it was probably a decent amount more compared to if they just ran business as usual. So it got me thinking, in terms of a business decision in general does it make perfect sense to always go with the more profitable option even it means cancelling smaller contract agreements?
It’s one of those things where on paper it probably does. However, it’s kind of hard to put value on like say a negative review or how much influence that one disappointed person could have on a business. I know for myself personally it makes me simply want to ask for a full refund even if they now offered like an extra day to compensate for it.
I know I am usually one of those customers who would be pretty understanding as long as there was some kind of warning. If you are a business make sure you always have ways to communicate effectively about any sudden changes to everybody. Even I understand businesses need to make money to stay afloat.