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ECM 2020 – Postponement

In light of the latest information from the Prime Minister and the Chief Medical Officer and with fewer than 4 weeks to go before this year’s ECM, unfortunately, we’re going to have to postpone the event.

The advice given is that social gatherings should now not happen to help ensure everyone stays safe and the burden on the NHS is kept to within safe limits to care for those that need it.

We are massively disappointed, but fully understand this decision.

What about my tickets?
We will, of course refund everyone the price of their ticket, though we have noted that a number of you want us to either retain their ticket price against costs or as a charitable donation in lieu of the funds we would have raised. We’ll look at that on a case by case basis, but the default option is that if we don’t hear from you, we’ll refund you as a matter of course. If you have questions, or want to get in touch, our address is info@elitecommunitymeet.info and you can access our discord channel if you want to talk to any of the team.

What next?
We will be talking to the venue about the possibility of postponing the event and will look to keep it in the same location with their assistance.

When?
At this stage, we don’t have an answer for this. Options are potentially to look later in the year should the situation improve, or maybe look for the same time next year. It is a massive time sink for the volunteers and finding a time of year when we’re all free to build all the awesome fun is a challenge, but one we’ll start working on shortly.

What about the raffle prizes and all the great things we’ve made/supplied?
The team will be looking to create a digital event on the date of ECM itself and we intend at this stage to open up the raffle to all those who had tickets and provide a few hours entertainment and a big giveaway for charity of all the wonderful creations. We’ll be talking to our sponsors and offering them the chance to be involved, showcasing their own products and joining in the fun, but at this stage we can’t make any promises.

The event costs
As it stands, other than individual costs for things created, we’ve paid a deposit to the venue and paid for event insurance (which unfortunately specifically excludes the current situation). It is our hope that we can renegotiate to carry that forward and not leave us with costs in the hopes of running ECM Take 2 in the future.

My hotel isn’t letting me refund/my travel costs aren’t letting me refund
Whilst we can’t help directly with these, anything we can do in terms of confirmation of the cancellation of the event to support you getting a refund, or helping persuade them to give you a credit against a future stay or future travel, of course we are happy to give you a copy.

Update from Premier Inn:
https://www.premierinn.com/gb/en/coronavirus.html
The update from Premier Inn is that Non-flex bookings will be refundable should you rebook an equivalent booking with the chain before october. Even if that booking is for a future date.
This means you do not need to panic about your non-flex bookings, even if they have passed and been charged. When you make your replacement non-flex booking (paying again), you email the references and details to the specific email address and they will process a refund on your original booking. Now hopefully this means you won’t need to spend hours on the phone like me and can instead wait for the pressure on call centres to pass with knowledge you should be covered.

Thank you one and all for the support you give the event – it’s built by the community and it’s the community spirit that will keep us going until the next one. In the meantime, watch out for notification of the “Virtual ECM” that we’re hoping to put together and hope as many of you as possible can join us, even if only for a few hours.

Covid-19 – Issues and Concerns

With the current situation of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are carefully monitoring the advice from both the UK Government and the World Health Organization.
In Scotland public meetings of more than 500 people have been banned, and the instructions are changing as the situation develops.
At this current time, we hope, want and expect the event to go ahead as planned.

We have a fantastic venue and we will work with them to ensure a safe and compliant venue where possible, and take definitive action as and when required.
We encourage our attendees to take all and any actions to keep themselves and fellow attendees safe and well. Please avoid basing your actions on social media posts and instead follow the instructions by government bodies and/or the World Health Organization.
https://www.gov.uk/government/topical-events/coronavirus-covid-19-uk-government-response

RISKS
* If you are of a particular risk group or just don’t want to take the chance, then we ask that you don’t attend, if you are symptomatic please follow the advice of self Isolation and don’t attend.

* We are not a company, this event is not for profit nor is it critical to any of our organisers income, we operate on a non profit basis with any surplus funds being split between our chosen charities.
We offer no-quibble refunds for your tickets and should attendees wish to request refunds for any reasons we intend to respect that fully.
This may however leave us with a personal cost, deposits have been paid and we might organise a virtual event/stream to help raise funds to cover these costs and charitable donation should it be required.

This is an unprecedented situation for us all, and we know there is no right or wrong answers as to how far is too far to go to protect yourself and vunerable loved ones.
We fully intend to make sensible and intelligent decisions based on the advice of the UK Government and WHO.


NOT ATTENDING?


I WANT A REFUND

If you want to obtain a full refund and not attend, you can do so through your paypal transaction OR by requesting one by sending an email to info@elitecommunitymeet.info please include your booking reference, and details you provided when making the booking.

I DON’T WANT A REFUND
We have already had emails from some of you amazing commanders pledging that no matter what happens they do not wish to have their tickets refunded. If this leads to a surplus of funds we will again honour the split to charities for all profits.

We will publish the financials for this event wether it goes ahead as planned or not.

We thank all of you for your understanding as this whole situation plays out, we hope to see you at the event on April 11th so we can have a lot of fun together.

Yours sincerley,

Grant, Simon, Eddie, Jim & David