Paying Kickbacks and/or the Buying of Referrals is a practice that has hidden in the dark edges of the shadows of the DJ/Entertainment business since the very beginning of the Mobile Disc Jockey Industry. This unsavory practice now seems to be much more prevalent than ever and this, I fear, is the most dangerous thing facing our industry to date.
DJ Companies are buying the rights to be the exclusive “house” company for many independent halls. Many DJ companies are allowing halls to mark up the DJs price in the “package” the hall offers to the client by as much as double the price that the DJ charges the hall for their services. Venues are asking for advance payment from the different purveyors that do their work at their locations in order to be placed on the venue’s Preferred Vendors list. But worst of all, there are DJ companies that are not waiting for halls to ask for these “under the table” inducements but are actually knocking on the door and offering them to the hall owners and/or managers. Are you guys crazy as well as dishonest? You know that this is wrong, wrong, wrong and that, by participating, you are doing everybody in the Private Event Industry, including yourself, a major disservice.
The problem has reached proportions of such magnitude that some venues, having gotten used to making a major chunk of money every weekend from this unscrupulous practice, will have the nerve to charge a client an extra charge for NOT using the DJ that the hall recommends. You may say, “That’s the bride’s (or company or parents or whoever the party client is) fault for paying that fee. They should go somewhere else”. Well, as is sadly the fact, sometimes the DJ is one of the final items decided upon by the party client and to keep from rearranging everything, they bite the bullet and pay the extra fee or the go with a DJ that they did not want to use in the first place.
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