Re: Event Board Recording SNAFU
It sounds like someone "helped" convince her to ask for all of her money back between when you talked to her the 1st time (25% discount) and the 2nd time. Your problem with this job brings up a bigger issue: how do we as an industry deal with the potential unreliability of wireless technologies? Although it doesn't seem that all of the mic problems were from wireless drop outs (seemed like some missed cues as well) the fact that there are problems with mics dropping out is real and many laymen clients don't understand the situation the way seasoned professionals do. In this case you had an event with a very important segment that only lasted a few minutes and it pretty much had to be done with wireless mics. Those are the hardest. It doesn't surprise me that something went wrong (just out of curiosity, what wireless were u using?). I'm surprised the video editor didn't use some camera mic mixed in. That might have saved it. Of course, it may have been the video co who convinced the client that the sound co was entirely at fault. In that case they wanted the sound to be as bad as possible when they showed it to the client.
Also, did the sound tech have to work out the switch from handheld to headset near the beginning of the song? That might have been a source of distraction.
I offered the 25 percent discount initially because my engineer said things had not gone well and I wanted to address it sooner rather than have her ask me for it. To address some of the other things said so far...
--There was no video producer to coordinate the production.
--There were many sources of distraction, from the moment our crew arrived even. While my engineer was supposed to be setting up shortly after arriving, she was instead grabbed by the client to go over the script.
--The gear was Shure SLX wireless. It wasn't an RF dropout (I have found them to be very stable), rather it was a bad connection somewhere in the chain, and my engineer couldn't find it. As I said before, I learned an expensive lesson about her inability to troubleshoot under pressure. I haven't really given her a hard time about this event though because I think she realizes how bad it is, and--this is a different topic entirely--I've seen too many young women traumatized out of the audio world.
--I did not upcharge for the feed, and this gets to the core of the lesson here. It's a separate service, and it requires either more preparation or more equipment.
--I don't think anyone coached her into demanding the refund. My business partner is convinced that she didn't know what she was supposed to get, but I couldn't really argue that with her when the final product sounded as bad as it did.
--Should the videographer have taken some responsibility for the audio, and communicated his needs to us better in the runup to the event (which was only a week, BTW)? Yes. But, to Dick Rees and Per's points, it wasn't that kind of show. It was almost literally a neighborhood production; the videographer was a personal friend from the neighborhood of the client, and the venue was in the neighborhood, etc.
), so now I always have a backup. If it means hitting the record button on Reaper so I have a multitrack available, so be it. If Daniel had a multitrack available, he'd spend an hour mixing it and have no issue pleasing his client. And he wouldn't be offering a refund at all. 
