Anybody know how to get a hold of this joker?

I’ve been going to conventions since 1976 and have never seen this kind of thing before. They should be ashamed!

As of this afternoon the Forums over at the FedConUSA site have been shut down. I find it suspicious that this occurred less than an hour after I posted the contact information for the Texas Attorney General’s Office with encouragement for fans who feel that they were ripped off to contact them.

or those of you who feel that Mr Brazeal et al committed credit card fraud; bait & switch tactics (or any other criminal activity) here is the contact page for the Texas Attorney General’s Office.

http://www.oag.state.tx.us/agency/contacts.shtml

By U.S. Mail:

Office of the Attorney General
PO Box 12548
Austin, TX 78711-2548

Physical Address:

Office of the Attorney General
300 W. 15th Street
Austin, TX 78701

By telephone:
Main agency switchboard (512) 463-2100
Public Information & Assistance (800) 252-8011 or (512) 475-4413 (in Austin)
Consumer Protection Hotline (800) 621-0508
Open Records Hotline (512) 478-6736 (478-OPEN)
Press Office (512) 463-2050

For those of you in Rio Linda you want the Consumer Protection Hotline at 800 621 0508.

The Dallas Regional Office of the Attorney General – Consumer Protection Division is located at
1412 Main St Suite 810
Dallas TX 75202
and can be reached at 214 969 7639.

Scott Merritt
http://www.pegasuspublishing.com

However, thank goodness for John Billingsley; you have to admire a man who steps in and just *copes* like that.

Just want to express my sympathy for all those who got stung, and respect for those who were able to put aside their own disappointment sufficiently to praise Mr Billingsley. Let’s hope it doesn’t put anyone off from attending better-organised events in future.

Please spread the word to everyone who attended and let them know they can go there and talk to others in the same boat.

Disclaimer: I have no connection to any event, FedCon or otherwise. This website is brand new and isn’t even ready for public release yet but I thought this issue was important enough to make it available to you.

Click on the link on my name to take you directly there or find your way to the message board by going to http://www.fannishinquisition.com

The fans and the guests were fantastic.

The organizers weren’t organized.

http://escape2earth.com

It’s a shame because this could have been a wonderful show. However without proper financial backing and a totally inexperienced promoter this was bound to happen. And I feel very badly for the fans who’d made the effort to show up who had the rug pulled out from under them.

We have been professional SF/Fantasy vendors for 30 years and this is now the 2nd time that we’ve had a convention canceled in the middle of the event. Unfortunately the other occurrence was also in Texas (the morbidly curious can look up Ultimate Fantasy in Houston).

Because I can do it (and partially to mitigate my losses for the weekend) we will be producing a limited edition commemorative t-shirt that says “I got FRAKKED at F(crossed out)DedCon USA! anyone interested in obtaining one of these needs to contact me by Thur 6/19/08 as I’ll be printing and mailing them next weekend. My email is pegasushelp@gmail.com.

There are a lot of good SF/Fantasy/Anime conventions around the country and particularly in Texas. I would like to hope that the first time attendees who were burned by this unscrupulous promoter to please please give conventions another try. They really are a lot of fun. Here is a small list of DFW area shows. DallasComicCon/SciFiExpo (www.scifiexpo.com); FenCon (www.fencon.org); ConDFW (www.condfw.org); All-Con (www.all-con.org); Project A-Kon (www.a-kon.com); Texas Frightmare Weekend (www.texasfrightmareweekend.com); AnimeFest (www.animefest.org); Portus (www.hp2008.org); Texas FearFest (www.txfearfest.com). And for those of you who travelled up from South Texas I recommend Apollo-Con Jun 27-29 (www.apollocon.org) in Houston.

Scott Merritt
Pegasus Publishing
http://www.pegasuspublishing.com

It’s in downtown Atlanta, easy flight into the Hartsford airport, take the MARTA/commuter rail to the Peachtree exit/station next to the mall, you are at the Hyatt/Marriott/Hilton. http://www.dragoncon.org

Here’s a list (as of today) of the TV/Movie stars: (notice the BSG & TREk stars)
Film & Television:
Sean Astin Erick Avari Morena Baccarin
Adam Baldwin Jamie Bamber Linda Blair
Avery Brooks Jeremy Bulloch James Callis
Don S. Davis Micky Dolenz Ami Dolenz
Michael Dorn Aaron Douglas Brad Dourif
Erica Durance Gigi Edgley Robert Englund
David Franklin Erin Gray Dean Haglund
Richard Hatch Jason Hawes Lance Henriksen
Virginia Hey James Hong Stacy Keach
Walter Koenig James Kyson Lee Robert Llewellyn
Jake Lloyd Gareth David Lloyd Cirroc Lofton
Daniel Logan Sean Maguire James Marsters
Phil Morris Devon Murray David Nykl
David Palffy Ray Park Tahmoh Penikett
Robert Picardo David Prowse James Randi
Michael Rosenbaum Katee Sackhoff Cliff Simon
Kevin Sorbo Jewel Staite George Takei
Adam West Grant Wilson

PS – No, I don’t work for them or anything, I just got tired of cons promising stars that never showed. Good luck to us all.

Yes. Look up Flanvention II.

Yes. It is called a SCAM. Event promoters who do not want to risk their own money do this kind of thing all of the time. They hope that all of their promises will result in attendance sales, they make promise after promise without having anything real in hand and then, if (and when) everything falls apart, they blame everyone else so they can repeat the process over again in the future.

The signs that this is what was going on here were apparently there: the scheduling of the event on top of another convention, the feelings by FEDCON GMBH, the previous TrekUnited history.

I was at the convention today and overall thankfully the attendees came together and many of us enjoyed each other’s company and talking fandom stuff enough to salvage some friendships and enjoyment out of it all. I am one of the lucky ones who lives in the general area and had an hour of so of travel, and my hearts go out to the people who traveled from Canada, Tokyo, out of state, etc.

Being “local-ish”, however, I was originally a bit stunned that they were having the con at a somewhat “insular’ hotel–convenient to the city-within-a-city airport but nothing else…no “casual attendees” were likely, and there is very little to do without transportation. It’s not a place you can just “drop by and check out,” you have to pay a toll and drive a few miles into the cloverleaf-crazy airport just to take a peek.

Also, the guest list changed so much and the “such-and-such-day-only” for some stars was not reflected on the program. You expect some alteration, but a huge turnover like what happened in these last couple weeks was confusing, and from what I heard today, very much primarily NOT the guest’s doing AT ALL, as was bandied about beforehand by, ahem, the “official” sources.

Hindsight is obviously a great helpmate for these statements, but I was stunned when I saw the *size* of the ballroom that was set up for attendees. Having been to several conventions in this market that were established and had a significant following of people, some of whom planned their vacations around it every year, I still have never seen a room that big set up for a con down here. Maybe it’s just the room that the hotel had that best fit the purpose, but it seemed grossly overly optimistically projected if they thought they’d come anywhere close to filling that room. We love our Sci-Fi here, but…wow it was a big room.

I had the weekend economy package I’d pre-purchased online even knowing I’d miss Friday, but I had wanted good seats. I showed up today expecting a bit of a line to pick up tickets, and though there weren’t tons of people in line, it was going very slowly and the volunteers seemed a bit confused and out-of-sorts (this was about 9:30, Pre-Canceling). I had my tickets from online, but I purchased a Paul McGillion Photo Op for tomorrow. His schedule had been turned around for actual shooting concerns (apparently he really was filming last night, which was why they’d moved him to Sunday), but he was still supposed to be there as far as the registration vols new as of registration today. I later heard that some people were told that he wasn’t coming before the full cancellation was announced, I guess while John and Bonita’s talk was going on.

Anyway, there was later some talk between another guest and an assistant that Paul had been constantly in contact with them last night and today about whether he was supposed to come or not, because the plan had still been to come and fly in Sat night for the Feast and then do his part on Sunday as the revised schedule stated, but they (the promoters) had NO TICKET for him to fly down! NOT his fault. And he wasn’t the only one.

As has been said, our hearts go out to the emcee, poor fellow. Talk about open season on “the messenger.” I had seen on his bio that he is a fan and had been a volunteer at many other cons; I’m sure it just killed him to have to disappoint everyone. I really didn’t understand why we couldn’t just continue the programming for today, but if, as someone else suggested, the payments to the hotel fell through (or maybe they negotiated a discount for the day to pull out right away??) maybe they had no choice but to do so. Damn shame, though.

As has also been said, ABSOLUTE HEARTFELT THANKS to John Billingsley and his wife, Bonita Friedericy. During their talk, they said that they weren’t sure one of the afternoon’s guests would be making it, but they would be happy to fill in and continue their (incredibly entertaining!!!) Q&A. Then, as Scott reported, above, when the bomb fell (I truly thought it was a joke at first! I mean, SERIOUSLY??!?), he turned from happy-go-lucky entertainer to truly concerned (and serious-as-a-heart-attack) attendee-advocate. He was very polite but was firm in requesting that they stay to give us answers, and when consecutive folks would stumble upon something they couldn’t answer and deferred to a nebulous ‘someone else’, he would say “I think you need to get that person here now, then.” And appear they would. And when the hotel was looking like they wanted us out, etc, he firmly suggested that we would be finishing the questions to the promoter’s representatives first. His organization of the dialogue at the end there avoided some ugliness for the poor volunteers, got people some good starts to answers, and diffused some of the confusion and hard feelings that allowed for us to have a decent time later.

The auto room was great; everyone who was there had plenty of time to chat with the stars, and all the guests who were there were gracious and fun, there was much horseplay with the rowdy Klingons (O’Reilly and Hertzler), and it was certainly memorable.

Anyone who was there who can, it would be a nice gesture to donate anything you can to John and Bonita’s chosen charity, http://www.aidsservicecenter.org/ , in thanks of their tremendous job in carrying much of what could have been a *total* loss.

Also, a couple of the young stars from an online show called IQ-145 were very sweet and very excited about their new project, and one of them, Amber Wallace, traveled to the convention with family and they were all incredibly nice and when she wasn’t around were urging us to go check it out. I would have liked to learn more in the actual convention, but everyone can check it out at http://www.iq-145.com

Lastly, plug-wise, the Austin Browncoats organized a raffle for the Nathan Fillion (Firefly-Serenity)/ PJ Haarsma (The Softwire author) charity Kids Need to Read that donates books to libraries, etc., that had very little exposure since it was in the dealer’s room that was immediately disbanded. Anyone wanting more info, or to help, can go to http://www.kidsneedtoread.org/ or http://www.austinbrowncoats.com

I feel so sorry for all of you that traveled here; I have been to a few cons with significant travel bills and I can certainly put myself in your shoes.
One thing I wonder: though I am very, very happy to have salvaged some fun and friendships out of all this, I would be very interested to know why the promoter didn’t cancel before now. Most airlines have to allow you to refund your tickets if the sole event you had the ticket for was canceled. Now he’s not only in the hole with upset fans, he’s got some people with $2k+ travel expenses that they can do nothing about. That, for most of us, is a once-in-a-year-or-several kind of travel bill for one of these. I can’t help but think there’s some liability involved on the part of the promoter when there was not the usual “last minute cancellation of a guest or two due to circumstances beyond our control” but widespread (apparently) misleading statements about the guests they were actually working to bring to the event. I mean, who has heard of, if this was the case, waiting for mid-convention sales to try to fund the travel of further guests???

Thanks to the Hyatt hotel, though; they are honoring the convention rate still, and waiving the fee for early departure.

Sorry again for it being long-winded, but very glad for all the stars that the promoter did shell out some of our money to get here, and for the fandom loves and fun fellow attendees that kept us engaged and laughing even through such a colossal eff-up.

My name is Ron, I live in the Netherlands and I have specifically subscribed to this forum to express some of the feelings regarding the things I am reading here, which have made me extremely unhappy.

BTW, I am just a fan and not involved with FedCon in any way, I do however feel very strongly about things like this, having been the victim of it on several occasions.
I have monitored the unfolding of FedCoNUSA right from its announcement more than a year ago at the FedCon Germany event. I had actually considered going there, being an avid conventioneer as well as a true and faithful fan of the German FedCon event myself. The reason I gave up on that idea long ago has everything to do with the unfolding of the event and the various ‘mistakes’ along the way that made me rapidly loose confidence in this organizer’s credibility. And now I am very glad I listened to that gut feeling since the show has now been cancelled prematurely, as things were not going ‘the way we planned’!

I simply feel I have to come out of my lurking state to respond to some of the stuff I am reading here because, quite frankly I am totally and completely p**sed off by it as well as completely appalled. And I am disgusted by the way the reputation of FedCon has been smeared by a bunch of incompetents who put themselves into a pair of shoes many sizes too big for them.

I simply love the FedCon convention, it is one of the best in the world and, moreover, it still one of the few we have over here that is worthwhile going to. I feel strongly about this convention and, as a result, I feel strongly about things that affect the continuation of FedCon as the great thing that it is. I can honestly assure you, American friends, that this is NOT the FedCon experience you have been waiting for and paid good money for.

Now, FedConUSA was meant to bring the FedCon experience to the USA. In my mind a worthy effort, and a good idea. If-and I repeat this- if done properly. The last few years have seen a decline in the number of conventions as well as a continuous struggle on the part of convention companies to simply continue bringing us great shows. As a result, many of the smaller companies have simply succumbed, including one of the finest small-scale events we had here in the Netherlands. The last thing this business needs is a visit by Mr. Frak-up, so to speak. Over here in Europe we had quite a few of those, thank the Gods that this years FedCon was a huge success, so maybe things will start turning for the better now.

But what I am reading here will certainly not help. On the contrary, it reminds me uncomfortably of a disastrous first event a few years ago over here in the Netherlands, that ended with one of the organizers taking the money and running with it, and it was only the intervention and efforts of the convention agent that saved some of the event for the faithful fans. But it has dramatically hurt the business over here, and I fear that the current BS regarding FedCONUSA may be quite as hurtful.

As I said, I have been monitoring the organization process of FedConUSA and what I saw made me sometimes very sad. I recall the confusion regarding the appearance of Connor Trinneer and the absolute amateuristic way this was dealt with, all the stupid excuses and not to mention the blame game being directed at both Connor’s agent as well as at Connor himself. And now with the absolutely horrible way some wonderful actors have been treated I am actually very, very angry.

I applaud Aaron Douglas for stepping out and being HONEST to the fans. Being honest to fans is something we apparently cannot expect from the organizers of this mess, who excel in delivering whining excuse notes but who seem pitifully incompetent to deal with the actual business that is involved in running a convention.

I applaud Aaron for actually apologizing to the fans and trying to make amends, as if it were his responsibility. As far as I am aware this is the first time an actor has actually stepped out and showed us some very dirty laundry. I feel this is unprecedented, and particularly after all the horsesh*t that’s been pouring out of predominantly Tim Brazeal’s mouth on this and other occasions. I cannot believe the sad excuses I have been reading coming from him.

Tim, I sincerely hope you recover, but please, please, PLEASE, stay out of the fan or convention business from this moment for the rest of your life. Dismantle your Trekunited, whatever that is, as we really, really, REALLY don’t need you. You have done quite enough harm, and you are clearly not up to the task, thank you very much. And the same sentiment goes to the rest of the FedCONUSA team, please get your as*es out of the convention business and by all means stay out. We also don’t need you.

I can only hope that the damage done by FedCONUSA will not have its repercussions upon the FedCon Germany event, and I do sincerely hope that the mitigation efforts mentioned elsewhere will be successful. I however do hope that those fans that have trusted FedCONUSA with their precious money will somehow get satisfactory compensation, one way or another. Your trust seems to have been misplaced. But there is this little nag in the back of my head that says I’ve seen this all before. And I am still awaiting for the compensation for that…

My heart goes out to those who are victimized by this….

Thanks for reading this..

I know most people know what happened today if they have read some of the other postings. So I’m not really posting anything new here, but I wanted to put all my thoughts about this weekend into one post. I’m sorry that this will be long winded, but I want to give fans who missed it an accurate picture of what happened.

As the rest of you I’ve been looking forward to this weekend for some time now. I’ve checked the web site pretty often to read about guest changes and make sure everything was good to go. I didn’t read much on the forums, so I didn’t realize that the real FedCON pulled out of this project earlier this year. If I had, I might have been a little more suspicious. So until this weekend, I assumed that this was an official FedCON project. I bought the weekend general admission pass and planned this as a mini vacation. I got into town Friday afternoon and everything seemed to be going smoothly. There had been a few scheduling changes, but nothing serious. As the day progressed, the rumor that the actors from Battlestar Galactica weren’t going to make it. If I had read the forums, I would have known that Aaron Douglas had posted on here that he had not heard anything from the organizers about getting a flight scheduled.

The openning ceremonies weren’t what I expected. It started off with a fan singing a medly about stalking stars (bless her heart-she meant well, but this wasn’t my idea of how to kick off the weekend). The master of ceremonies, although very nice, was dragging this along when it came to introducing the guests. John Billingsly came out a couple of times with a bottle of whisky telling him to hurry things along (a pretty humrous moment) and eventually he came out and took the mic away and basically took over. He brought out all the guests and poured them all a shot of whiskey and posted a toast. Thank God for this, because someone really needed to take over and get things moving along. John Billingsley was really great. The pre-party Friday night was okay but even that didn’t go as planned. First off, the DJ didn’t show up so they had some guy playing music from his computer. The music was too loud and made it hard to have conversations with other fans. We were lead to believe that the guests would be attending, but the only one to show up while was there was John Billingsley and his wife who went around shaking our hands and danced on the dance floor (again, God bless John-he really was great). The Master of Ceremonies, Richard Anderson, was there and he made it a point to go around to each table and sit with the fans and talk to them. I do want to make a point to say that Richard was very nice and even though the weekend didn’t go as planned, he had nothing to do with it-he wasn’t even part of of FedCON-he was just hired to be the speaker. I could tell by talking to him that he was very nervious and concerned about making the CON work. I’m sure he knew then that things weren’t going well, but he said he was working hard to keep things going smoothly. I know that a lot of people ended up mad at him the next day when he broke the news that the CON was cancelled, but I enjoyed talking with him during the pre-party. After that, I attended the Rocky Horror Picture Show production and thought it was really great.

Then came Saturday. There were a lot of good stars scheduled for Saturday. The day didn’t start off great. I went down and the first guest (Anthony Montgomery-Travis Mayweather) wasn’t there. I asked the guys at the door who would check for your ticket badge who the next speaker was and where the other speaker was. They seemed clueless. They had to look at my schedule to give me an answer. “Oh, yeah, that first guy was a no-show, but John Billingsley is the next guest and he is here.” I thought, well, thats great, because John and a lot of other actors were scheduled after him (Connor Trinneer, Garett Wang, and some others). Well John Billingsley and his hillarious wife arrived on time and began their Q&A. They started off with a few stories and started taking questions from fans. About half way through, he was interupted by the masters of ceremonies. He said, can we take one more question? The MC looked like he wanted to say “no” but said, OK. He came on stage and told us that the CON had been cancelled. He didn’t give much of a reason, other than that the ticket sales for Saturday weren’t as expected. John Billingsley took a mic and said “We need to give the people information on how to get refunded.” He wasn’t sure what to say and ended up having a few other of the organizers come onto the stage to try to answer questions. I can’t say enough good things about John-he was really our only advicate and was not rude to the organizers but very firm about us getting our concerns answered. He took a mic and went around the room and wouldn’t let them kick us out of the room until everyone had a chance to ask questions and voice their thoughts. When it was all said and done, it was announced that the autograph room would remain open for Sat/Sun and that the guests could sign autographs at their discresion. This would not have happened if everyone hadn’t voiced their anger and if John hadn’t been there to fight for us. Honestly, John really was great. He voiced his own anger about what a dissaster this turned out to be and how the organizer of this event will never host another CON again. He said he would talk to FedCON Germany to see why they lent their name to this event. He said he would personally make sure everyone gets refunded and told us how we could contact him thru his web site.

They chased everyone out of the convention room at that time and everyone went to the autograph room. Honestly, if it hadn’t been for the autograph room remaining open for a few hours, this whole trip would have really been worse than it was. I hadn’t planned on getting autographs but since this was the only way to be able to hear the guests speak. I got a chance to meet John B. and Garrett W., get their signature, talk to them and take my picture with them. Everyone was only charging 20.00 for signatures (much cheaper than other CONs), and they were surprisingly approachable and let us take pics with them and they were happy to answer questions. Pretty much all the guests who actually made it were down there signing autographs. I shook John’s hand and thanked him for sticking up for us and for being so great. His wife was just as great and were both the best Trek guests I’ve met. I’ve turned into a big John Billingsley fan after this weekend. He wasn’t the reason I came to this CON, but he is what made it worth while even though everything fell apart.

Even though they initially said that the autograph room would be open Sunday, I have a feeling it won’t.

So, the big question is what went wrong.

After reading the forums, many guests (the one’s who didn’t make it) were not contacted by the organizers and their phone calls were not returned. The organizers say the actors pulled out, but that is not the case. They were packed and ready to go but no one would book them a flight or make contact with them at all. These guest were not being contact even before the CON started, which would indicate that the organizers already knew that they were not going to fly them in. However, they did not pull their names off the list of guests from the web site, falsely selling tickets to fans leading them to believe that they would still be attending, knowing they woudn’t. This is just criminal in my opinion. This is nothing short than fraud. They used these actors names to sell tickets, knowing full well that they were not making attempts to fly them in. Not only that, they never pulled their names off of the web site when they knew they wouldn’t be here. People were still buying tickets thinking that these guest would be here. Some fans spent a lot of money to fly in from other countries and all around the U.S. These people will not be refunded for their travel or hotel. They will be lucky to even be refunded for the tickets. It really angers me that the organizers are blaming the guests for pulling out when that was not the case at all. I honestly feel that fans who paid a lot of money to get here should contact an attorney and sue FedCON USA and the organizer for fraud and false advertisement.

I feel just as bad for the guest stars, most of whom were not paid for being here and did this pro bono. The ones who were supposed to be here but were stiffed probably feel bad that fans might be mad at them for not showing up.

I know I’m a bit long winded here, but I wanted to paint a picture for those who weren’t here. For those who were, bless your hearts-the one’s I talked to were so nice and made the best of an awful situation. I hope to see you all in the future at a CON who knows what they are doing (I vote for the Vegas CON later this year).