Those planning events at many hotel properties have been affected by the astronomical price increases by Encore. They charge prices that are much higher than other audio visual entities and they get away with it. When they are questioned, they will typically lower their prices or meet the prices of other companies. But they still find ways to make huge revenues.

We need to push back karma as meeting planners. This cannot continue to go on. It is impacting our events, and our budgets. It is impacting our attendee experience. I have seen stories where they will charge $900 for somebody to rent four-power strips, for example.

When they discount equipment, they more than make up for it with labor charges. If you bring in an outside vendor, you still get charged a fee if it is not explicitly written in your contract that they are not allowed to do so.

This has to stop! I barely have to use Encore in my day today since we have a contracted AV company that we use. But, I am a member of quite a few meeting planner groups where this is a constant topic of discussion. I don't think anyone has set up a change.org petition but we need to do this so that we can get this in front of Congress and stop This practice of throwing out ridiculously high prices and seeing if it will stick before offering discounts that should have been the prices offered to begin with.

Many times, people are not getting their quotes until days before they move into event where they have very little time to negotiate and are kind of just stuck with that pricing.