Paradisus Riviera Brides - POST HERE!

Hi Meredith and all other PRC brides

I apologize Im not that active on this thread, I dont have access to a computer alot of the time but I still like to check it out when I can.

We are experiencing the same situation with Luis from Swank. We initially emailed him asking for a quote in which he sent us one that was compeltly out of our budget.

We then proceeded to look at an outside vendor and contacted Carlos from Mannia DJ services. They were in our budget and we confirmed with Perla the outside fee was 300$. We then informed SWANK we were not going to be using him and he proceeds to tell us we owe him 15% of his original quote plus taxes and he is charging us an ampage fee based on consumption and a charge for him to be there.

We think this is completly unfair as we feel we should have been advised of this before he issued us that quote. If we knew we were going to have to pay for it then we never would have asked! Never in this entire wedding process planning have we had to pay for a quote.

We also think that when we confirmed it was 300$ for the outside vendor we feel we should have been informed about these other fees.

We have explained the situation to Perla and she is looking into it for us. I will let you know when I hear back from her. Hopefully she can sort something out!!!

We negotiated with swank..originally he gave us a quote of 1300.00!!

Crazy price!!

We got him down to $900.00. We are using victor de alba from swank

Yeah that is totally ridiculous. We too got multiple quotes from him and did not pay (and would not have paid) for those quotes. I told him I was walking if he didn't match Mannia's quote... so he did. But that was last year and I know that there pricing and policies have changed.

When he explained to us the additional costs (on top of the $300) there was an AMP charge and also a charge for one of their staff ppl to be there (since you are using SWANKS' equipment) and there was some insurance issues as well.

Hey girls - I am thinking that the $300 fee includes all the money to be paid to SWANK for the equipment, supervision, etc. I will confirm this with Perla and let you know (haven't heard back from her on this yet). Either way - I am paying the $300 and that's all - Perla never mentioned any extra costs so she will have to reduce something else in the budget to cover SWANK (if she needs to), but I won't pay more. That is crazy.

On a positive note - when Carlos emailed me about a microphone at the ceremony - he quoted me $300. Then I asked him about the SWANK charges and he told me that he is familiar with them - not to worry about it...and by the way (as a wedding present) he reduced the microphone to $150 without me even asking about it. That is how you get customers He seems really nice!

I'll let you know if I get charged anything else...good times!

Meredith - I am really interested to hear what Perla has to say about this - when I was doing my research and getting quotes - she told me it was $300 plus the AMP cost plus the cost to have someone there. UGHHH

missy-would you by any chance have the file with the centerpieces?

thanks:)

OMG I had the same issue with Victor from Swank It's really annoying. He sent me this HUGE overpriced quote after Perla informed him that I was working with Carlos. We had a few emails back and forth where I told him that Elisa the original coordinator had told me there was a $300 fee to use an outside vendor and then he disagreed and said it was 15% of his total quote. Which ends up being $330.

I was really annoyed by all the back and forth and unclear information.

yamille- do you have a copy of the centerpiece file? i reached out to danielle 2 weeks ago but havent heard back?

by the way yamille where in queens are you from?? i grew up in howard beach