Mounting number of Foundry Room customers say they’re awaiting refunds

Multiple customers of the event company Foundry Room say they are awaiting refunds after the business was evicted from its leased spaces. Nav Sangha reports.

Multiple people say they are owed money by Foundry Room, an event curator in Edmonton known for its highly aesthetic productions.

Having provided an all-inclusive service for thousands of events over nearly a decade, Foundry Room and its founder Jody Seremet had earned themselves a reputation for easy, elevated experiences: first, in a brick-walled refurbished electrical substation called Oliver Exchange (OEX), then its newly built brother, OEX2, next door, plus a venue in Fort Saskatchewan, northeast of Alberta’s capital city.

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That reputation is being blasted apart one single-star Google review or semi-viral TikTok at a time.

Currently, Foundry Room puts on events at none of the three locations it once did, its website redirects visitors to a GoDaddy landing page, and the most recent posts on the company’s Instagram address claims on social media Seremet is running a scam operation.

Seremet told CTV News Edmonton she finds the word scam “baffling.”

Instead – opting to explain herself via email rather than interview because she said she has received death threats – the business owner says the Foundry Room story is that of a failed business whose owner realized her mistakes too late.

“This is not some sexy story or (sic) fraud and scamming,” Seremet wrote. “This is a story of a 9 year old business (sic) that lost a venue because of covid (sic) and tried to keep going but should have shut down.”

Accusations total thousands of dollars

CTV News Edmonton spoke to three customers and another Edmonton entrepreneur about their experiences with Foundry Room.

Only one customer is not awaiting a refund: a 2022 bride who says she technically received the service she paid for – a fully serviced wedding function – but that the party was terribly disorganized and moved to a third-party location two weeks before the date because OEX2 wasn‘t ready, as Seremet had promised it would be.

The others say they are owed between $800 and $9,400.

The latter amount was paid by a couple who hired Foundry Room to put on their wedding but never did.

Amy and Stefan Eybers signed a contract in September 2022 to rent the Fort Saskatchewan venue for their April 2024 wedding. They say Foundry Room began asking them in late 2023 to move their wedding to the OEX2 location in central Edmonton, which they declined. Their catering vendor a few months later told them the venue had terminated its lease with Foundry Room.

The couple cancelled their Foundry Room contract, having been promised they would be refunded the total they had paid in installments up to then.

“They said, ‘Within a couple of weeks, we‘ll refund you.’ And that’s pretty much the story we‘ve gotten from then on – and that’s been about a year of us back and forth. ‘Yes, we‘re gonna refund you, you’re next here.’ And then nothing,” Amy told CTV News Edmonton in a recent interview.

The newlyweds borrowed money from family to hire the catering company to host their wedding. With a new baby in the house, Stefan is working overtime to pay off the debt.

“We‘re not able to go on a honeymoon because … almost $10,000 is a lot of money,” Amy said.

Engaged couple Erika Josephison and Maksym Pryma are owed the $2,600 deposit they paid for the OEX space for their wedding later this year. At the end of summer, they learned Foundry Room had been evicted from the building. They say Seremet told them everything would be fine because Foundry Room had a repayment plan with Hyphen Group, the property manager. In November, Seremet told them Foundry Room was no longer operating out of OEX and that Hyphen Group would be taking over the wedding. They decided to relocate when Hyphen Group informed them that was not the case.

A spokesperson for Hyphen Group told CTV News Edmonton Foundry Room’s leases for OEX and OEX2 were legally terminated due to “repeated and uncured defaults.”

“Any monetary transaction such as deposits or payments between the former tenant and their clients were private arrangements to which the landlord was not a party. To suggest that the landlord bears any responsibility for these private agreements is entirely false,” Dave Hennessey said in an email.

Business owner responds

“Our business went under,” Seremet insists. “No one was scammed.”

She told CTV News Edmonton business was tough in a post-pandemic economy, especially at the Fort Saskatchewan location.

“We dropped our prices after covid (sic) to accommodate the market but our lease payments and bills increased and we should have increased our pricing as well,” Seremet said.

“I should have shut down then and reopened when we were able to do so, what we did was try to stay open and continue operations for those that were booked instead of just letting it go, we also didn‘t claim bankruptcy then and another mistake we made in dealing with this situation (sic),” her email continued to read.

Seremet says a private lender by the name of Marcus Williams paid out $27,000 in refunds before quitting due to harassment. Seremet refused to say how much Foundry Room owed, nor to how many people. She also did not provide documentation for any of her claims or the lender’s contact information.

She told CTV News Edmonton Foundry Room is refunding anyone who cancelled their contract and is in the process of selling the brand and inventory in order to issue the remaining refunds – but that selling has been troubled by negative attention.

She also said it is “common sense” for a business to use a customer deposit to cover expenses unrelated to that customer’s event, and therefore it is understandable that Foundry Room doesn‘t have those deposits on hand anymore to refund to unhappy clients.

This rhetoric was captured in a recording last summer by a former employee who was not comfortable providing an interview. In the recording, Seremet can be heard saying, “We weren‘t about to be like, ‘Sorry, we can‘t have your wedding and give you back your money.’ When people pay money, we pay the lease. There is no money to give back. So we have to book a new client to pay a refund. And then it’s just a cycle and a cycle and a cycle.”

Customers not hopeful

Asked if he thought they’d ever get their money back, Stefan Eybers responded, “No.”

Both couples who spoke to CTV News Edmonton and Newlife Clothing owner Robbie Yamada – who says he was never refunded the $800 OEX2 rental fee after Foundry Room was evicted – provided similar-looking emails signed by Wiliams or another man who Seremet says is Wiliams’ associate. They all promised the email recipient was third in line to be refunded.

Others belonging to a Facebook group called “Victims of The Foundry Room Events Ltd” claim to have received this email as well.

“We‘ve heard the refunds are coming so many times that it just doesn‘t seem sincere anymore,” Pryma said.

“The most frustrating part is that we don‘t know what’s true and what’s not. I’m just assuming everything is a lie at this point,” Yamada added.

Josephison and Pryma are considering legal action. Other customers told CTV News Edmonton they are considering going to police.

Those who shared their stories with CTV News Edmonton said they hoped doing so would prevent others from similar trouble, the same reason they are alerting others online.

But after Amy Eybers left a critical Google review, she received an email from Seremet pressuring her to remove it.

“With your review I fear that all the new clients we just did tours for and awaiting deposits will not book and then we are back in the same position and unable to proceed with refunds,” Seremet wrote, later asking to send $1,000 as a show of good faith. “If you can give me until the 31st and if you don‘t receive it by then you can put it back up but I don‘t want to lose the new bookings as that’s what we need to repay the refunds and to keep going (sic).”

Some former Foundry Room customers are concerned about a new event venue in Ontario, called Aria Venue, that appeared to be associated with Seremet’s Edmonton business. Aria Venue‘s original social media handle, website and email all contained “foundry” and one of the phone numbers on the business website is Seremet’s.

She denied owning a fourth location.

“I did state in my last email we were selling the name and inventory however that is now on pause because of assumptions we own and operate a new location and we do not. We worked with the owner to get things going and to have our inventory sent over in stages and he has hired someone to run his venues for him,” Seremet told CTV News Edmonton.

Lawyer weighs in

A University of Alberta lawyer whose specialties include contracts read over a Foundry Room contract.

He said it doesn‘t clearly define cancellations that result in the business keeping a deposit.

However, a more serious allegation – like of fraud – would require proof of intent, David Percy said.

“There‘s a big difference between a company that sets out with a scheme designed to take money from the start and something which may well be a company which was planning to perform the contract, but then became insolvent and wasn‘t able to do so,” he told CTV News Edmonton.

“It appears to me that, in terms of this contract, (the clients) have a right to say, ‘Nothing in this contract entitles you to keep whatever payments we‘ve made to you and therefore we should be able to recover them.’

“Then the question arises always, in this type of case, is the possible defendant in fact solvent? Because you can‘t get blood out of the stone.”

Percy also pointed out that it is now possible to take claims up to $100,000 to the Alberta Court of Justice, a less expensive option than a lawsuit in the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta.

With files from CTV News Edmonton‘s Nav Sangha