{"id":11306,"date":"2015-11-05T13:49:29","date_gmt":"2015-11-05T21:49:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=11306"},"modified":"2015-11-16T09:09:10","modified_gmt":"2015-11-16T17:09:10","slug":"ifcons-sudden-cancellation-lack-of-refunds-and-organizers-behaviour-leaves-would-be-attendees-stunned-angered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2015\/11\/05\/ifcons-sudden-cancellation-lack-of-refunds-and-organizers-behaviour-leaves-would-be-attendees-stunned-angered\/","title":{"rendered":"IFCon\u2019s sudden cancellation, lack of refunds, and organizers\u2019 behaviour leaves would-be attendees stunned, angered"},"content":{"rendered":"

Update: Go here to read our interview with IFCon’s Ken Twyman<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

On Tuesday, October 27, the plug was pulled on Victoria\u2019s Island Fantasy Conference (IFCon), which was slated to be held on Friday, October 31 and Saturday, November 1<\/a>. Event organizers have gone silent, their online presence deleted, and would-be attendees and vendors who aren\u2019t getting refunds are up in arms.<\/p>\n

The way IFCon was cancelled and the resulting behaviour from those involved has led many who were going to attend with questions.<\/p>\n

Conference organizer Bill Code was allegedly admitted to a local hospital for a serious condition, which was the reason given as to why the conference was cancelled. Attendees and vendors who are out the money they spent on the convention are wondering why the convention had to stop because Code was ill.<\/p>\n

\"IFCon\u2019s<\/a>
IFCon\u2019s Bill Code (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Shortly after organizers gave the notice on Facebook, things got heated online. Within days, the point of contact for the conference was swearing to and insulting those who were going to attend IFCon, as well as threatening legal action to those speaking critically of the situation (he has since been relieved of his duties); the conference\u2019s official site was taken down and Facebook page was deleted; updates, allegedly written by Code\u2019s mother, were posted on Code\u2019s Facebook account but with his mother\u2019s name spelled two different ways. A Facebook page for people to talk about the situation was created under the name Hurt by IFCon 2015.<\/p>\n

All the while, refunds were not being given and there was no further communications from the conference organizers. The name of Code\u2019s business is IFC Productions; phone calls to the company\u2019s phone number went straight to voice mail, which was full.<\/p>\n

A Facebook post from organizers told people to not call the hospital, adding that they had asked the hospital to lie and say that Code was not admitted (the hospital confirmed to Nexus<\/em> that he was admitted).<\/p>\n

Adam Park, founder of local Japanese animation convention Tsukino-Con, says that his impression of IFCon was that they were \u201cbeing very, very ambitious, to be generous, for a first-time event.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI had some concerns about how well it was going to be executed,\u201d says Park. \u201cThey were expecting over a dozen industry guests. Knowing from convention experience how much an average guest costs, the expenses that would occur from that would necessitate them having a lot of attendees. Thousands of people. Typical range for a first-time Victoria convention would be around 1000 people; 2000 would be really good.\u201d<\/p>\n

One local retailer who had sold tickets urged people in a Facebook post to not ask local stores for refunds as many stores already gave the ticket money over to the IFCon team, meaning the stores would be paying for the refund themselves. (One local retailer, Lyle\u2019s Place, have said they will honour all refunds for tickets they have sold, and another, Legends Comics & Books, have also said they will refund and deal with the financial loss. Online ticket seller eventbrite have also said they will refund out of their own money.)<\/p>\n

This doesn\u2019t help all ticket-buyers, though.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was supposed to attend and my mom and I paid $90 in person to Bill Code,\u201d says would-be IFCon attendee Justine Robson. \u201cThey said they are offering refunds to people who ordered online and through eventbrite, but didn\u2019t mention anything about the people who purchased in person. Now all of the IFCon Facebook pages are deleted and I can\u2019t get ahold of anyone who was supposed to run the event.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conference organizers, who have said that they put $84,000 into the event (although the company printing the event\u2019s materials said on Facebook they have not been paid, leading many to wonder where exactly the $84,000 went to), have remained silent. The event was to be held at Pearkes Recreation Centre; in an interview with the Times Colonist<\/em>, facility manager Steve Meikl confirmed that they were paid some of the rental fee in advance.<\/p>\n

But trouble started earlier than this for IFCon, when would-be guest Troma Films\u2019 Lloyd Kaufman announced on Facebook on October 27 that he wouldn\u2019t be at the event as he said IFCon could not honour his contract.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis will certainly make people nervous about going with anything that\u2019s not well established in the future,\u201d says Park. \u201cI don\u2019t think it will overly hurt established conventions too much, but I think it will make some people more cautious about new projects in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another event planner said on Facebook that people have told him they won\u2019t pre-order tickets for his event because of what happened to IFCon.<\/p>\n

As of November 5, 2015, a police file for IFCon had been started with Saanich Police and there had been no further word from IFC Productions.<\/p>\n

IFC Productions has a Power Rangers Cruise scheduled for May 2016<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Update: Go here to read our interview with IFCon’s Ken Twyman. On Tuesday, October 27, the plug was pulled on Victoria\u2019s Island Fantasy Conference (IFCon), which was slated to be held on Friday, October 31 and Saturday, November 1. Event organizers have gone silent, their online presence deleted, and would-be attendees and vendors who aren\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11197,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11306"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11340,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11306\/revisions\/11340"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}