Part 1:
Good news, everyone!
The last refunds of the already accepted requests were – finally – successfully assigned yesterday.
You have surely wondered where your money has been. We would like to inform you briefly about what caused the delay.
Normally, this is how it would go:
You request a refund via the refund tool on our website. If you have bought and received a hardcover ticket, you will be asked to send it to us by mail. As soon as we receive it, the application can be validated and completed thus releasing the refund. If you have not yet received a ticket by mail, this step is omitted. This is the time when you receive the email confirming that your request for refund has been accepted and you will receive the ticket price to the specified account within a few days. In the next step your request will be checked and approved one last time. Your account details will be entered into a very long table, which we will then hand over to our bank. Our bank will then carry out the transfers one after the other.
Now it is unfortunately the case that these tables could not be processed by our bank and we only learned about this a few days ago. So last week we asked our one-man IT department to solve this problem in cooperation with our bank – which has now happened.
Understandably, we have received a great deal of enquiries about this. We can well understand this, as we would also ask if we were told that we would receive a transfer in a few days, but that it would not come. Due to the large number of these inquiries, we are unfortunately unable to reply to each one individually and are doing so with this letter (which also has been sent via email to all ticket buyers) in the hope that all confusion has been removed.
We are really very sorry that there was this enormous delay.
Part 2:
Some of you have received an email with e-tickets reminding you that Feel Festival 2020 will take place in 14 days.
Feel Festival 2020 will not be happening this year.
The reason for sending this email was that we had to convert tickets that had not yet been sent into e-tickets in order to make them refundable (only within our system). Since we generally only use e-tickets at Feel Festival in exceptional cases (e.g. the participation ticket is an e-ticket due to the small number of tickets), we simply didn’t know that our ticketing system would automatically send such a reminder e-mail shortly before the event. Unfortunately, the confusion has now already arisen and cannot be reversed. So here again: Feel Festival 2020 is cancelled and will not take place. Purchased tickets can be refunded via our website at www.feel-festival.de/refund2020
After all this back and forth and long waiting time we hope that you will still have a nice summer.
Since we receive more and more enquiries about when the respective ticket price is transferred to an account, we would like to briefly explain how the process is structured:
After the refund has been requested via the refund form (link), you will receive an email in which you will be asked to return the tickets to us if you have already received them by mail. We will then check the return for completeness and approve the refund. If you haven’t received any tickets yet, there is no need to send them back to us. Who has received tickets and who has not, is stored in our system. Therefore we only ask those who have already received tickets to return them. After the approval your account data will be put into a very, very long spreadsheet which we give to our bank. Our bank then carries out one transfer after the other.
We have no influence on how fast our bank processes such a spreadsheet and can therefore not give any exact information about when the amount will be credited to your account. As soon as you receive an email informing you that your refund has been accepted, we have done everything we can to influence the process.
We receive many emails every day. We are processing them all. But we are a small team of two and we don’t want to make any mistakes when reversing your payments. Therefore we have to check many procedures „by hand“ and unfortunately this takes a bit longer than we thought. Please support us by refraining from asking about your application. Answering these requests takes a lot of time, which we need to manage and control the actual refund process. Once you have submitted an application, you will be informed about everything else by email. If there is anything we need to complete your order, we will contact you.
Thanks for your patience!
like every year, we have been planning following Feel Festival right after Feel Festival 2019. Full of anticipation and thirst for adventure. As usual, we wanted to celebrate together with you, make new friends and talk about alternatives for a tolerant and open society. Basically everything as usual and now everything is different!
Feel Festival 2020 will not take place.
We have been struggling in the past weeks and also discussed a possible postponement. These thoughts have become obsolete due to the official prohibition of major events until at least the end of August. With a heavy heart our next reunion has to be postponed until next year.
We are thankful that, at the present time there are clear statements from the authorities. Only through the official order, not to allow gatherings like ours, we have the possibility to withdraw from contracts already concluded with service providers and thus not get into a financial predicament. Nevertheless we do our best to find a common ground with all partners.
We hope the government will recognise our right for existence as well as the urgently needed support for our industry, because the art and cultural scene is indispensable for our common socio-cultural life. Without art and culture, no return to a normal everyday life is imaginable. If there is no broad support, we will be in an even more serious situation, as this year’s expenditure will not be matched by any income. Through the state aid for small businesses we have received a one-time payment of 15,000.00 €. This aid is only a drop in the ocean for us and can only be a symbolic start for extensive support measures like the ones we got to know for other industrial sectors. With festival events, which can only generate their income on a few days in summer, this is not about a small drop in turnover or a dent in the course of the year, it is rather a total loss with running costs.
It is especially bitter for us that our heart-felt project has to be cancelled this year, because we had obtained temporary building permits for floors and workshop spaces until the end of 2020. These had to be prepared by costly specialist planners (architects, structural engineers, biologists, soil experts) in 2018, so we could use them for two years to keep a steady ticket price. Now we are confronted with the situation of having to take down these areas without using them this year. In addition, many costs have already been incurred for the planning, which we have to bear even though the festival cannot take place.
Feel Festival is a joint project. Our core team works all year round on the production, design and construction of the festival. But only in cooperation with all our artists, musicians, utopians, collectives, creative spirits and helpers will Feel Festival become what it is: a colourful place where people can laugh, dance, discuss and debate together.
Our internal solidarity therefore also applies to our employees, who have been working with us for years with full passion on this project. We will keep our office and construction team in employment, even if the regulations on short-time work do not fully compensate for the salary payments. We have decided to partially increase the amount of our salary in order to be able to provide each with an individual guaranteed minimum wage.
This would have been our sixth year at Bergheider See. It has become a new home for us and we feel deep gratitude to the community and the regional political structures that have always supported us. However, there are also many rumours circulating about whether this would not have been our last Feel Festival at Bergheider See anyway. We would like to outline the situation for you briefly and present it as transparent as possible:
We knew that there is an existing development project at Bergheider See and that the festival is seen as an interim use. Currently we are in a close coordination process with the community and the regional structures in order to find a place for Feel Festival at the lake in the long run. We are very confident that we will be able to build on the trust we have gained and that we will find an integrative solution that is compatible with the development plan.
It is currently not yet clear whether we will be able to host the 2021 Feel Festival at Bergheider See to the usual extent and to what degree the familiar local scenery can be used.
We are strongly committed to seeing culture not only as an interim use to activate and enhance it for future tourist or commercial uses. Rather, projects such as festivals in rural areas are necessary to provide a cultural offer and to regard this as a positive nucleus for further projects. In the cartographic mapping of the Lausitzer Seenland the Bergheider See fulfils the best prerequisites for a project like ours as a „sports and event lake“ and we expect that this insight will also gain political acceptance.
After extensive considerations we have decided to refund the ticket price paid by all ticket buyers, as we currently cannot foresee in which shape we can realize Feel Festival in 2021 at Bergheider See. Furthermore, we consider the offer to you as the only option under the current circumstances and consider it our contribution of solidarity.
Everyone is in an individual life situation and we would not like to expect anybody to have to wait for a possible refund until 31.12.2021, as it is stipulated in the draft law for the state voucher solution.
Probably one or the other of you is affected and got into a precarious life situation through no fault of your own. You have your own worries and needs in this uncertain time, so we would like to leave it to you and your individual financial possibilities to support us in this difficult time. For this purpose we offer you the possibility to leave a part of the ticket price to us and support our continued existence immensely via our ticket portal, which is linked below. Please support us, if you have the means to do so, so that Feel Festival can survive this difficult time and we can soon think only of better days!
Our calculation is very tight in order to keep ticket prices as low as possible and, at the same time, to be able to maintain the freedom that Feel Festival stands for. The costs for employees are the largest item in our calculation. During the year we have a construction team consisting of 4 people on site, which takes care of site management with deconstruction and clean-up work, repairs and security. In addition, we employ an internal team that is dedicated to the entire organization, planning and implementation of the festival. The state relief through short-time work is already included in the calculation, as we hope that we will only have to make short-term expenditures. At the moment, we are still responsible for the continued payment of salaries until they are reimbursed by the employment agency in the form of short-time work compensation. In the current situation, it is still uncertain when the advance payments will be paid. We have reduced all other positions as far as possible in good conscience in order to keep the financial impact within a manageable range. The costs can be seen in the table below.
In short, we are facing charges that are not offset by any income this year. So you can see what some of you probably already knew: The crisis is bad and brings us to the edge of existence.
What does the cancellation of the festival mean for me?
Since the event cannot take place this year, you are entitled to a refund of the ticket price. We will refund the ticket price to every guest excluding system and payment fees and leave it up to you to donate a solidarity contribution.
What does the cancellation of the festival mean for you?
We are facing charges that are not matched by any income this year. So you can see what some of you have probably already realized: The cancellation is bad and hits us hard. If many of you would like to take advantage of the right of refund and want to have 100% of the ticket price refunded, this would mean a heavy financial burden for us. If it is possible for you to support us and donate a part of your ticket, we would be happy about every single person who is able to do so.
How does the donation work?
Under the following link you can decide whether you want to donate a part of your ticket or if you want to claim back the whole ticket amount.
We are happy about every contribution that ensures our continued existence. As a limited liability company we are not entitled to issue a donation receipt.
Why don’t we participate in the state voucher option?
Everybody is in an individual life situation and we deliberately do not want anybody to have to wait for a possible refund until 31.12.2021, as required by law. You have your own worries and needs in this uncertain time, so we would like to leave it up to you and your individual financial capabilities to support us in this difficult time and therefore not participate in the state voucher option.
When can we expect to receive a refund?
The refund will be made as soon as possible after your personal reclaim via the above link.
Is the refund limited in time?
The refund is valid for three years. If you do not currently need a refund, you would do us a great favor, by postponing your refund to a later date.
I have not yet received my ticket. How do I proceed?
You can use your order ID to request a refund by clicking HERE.
As before, you can contact the following e-mail address for all questions concerning tickets: ticket@feel-festival.de. Please understand that it may take a few days until you receive an answer. The most common questions will be answered at www.feel-festival.de/faq. Direct and without waiting time.
We will continue to work for our heart-felt project with untiring passion and boundless love. We thank you in advance for your support and hope that next summer we can celebrate life together again. Stay healthy!
Your Feel Famliy
Aileen, André, Alex, Eddy, Fabienne, Felix R., Felix W., Findan, Jana, Kira, Laura, Lisa, Martin, Meier, Mitch, Sophie, Svenja, Tom und Rakete
