I have not been given an official reason by the Omar Shriners why the stop payment was placed on these two checks and my bank has in fact indicated that a stop payment was issued by the check writer. I want to emphasis that this is NOT Shriners International but a division named the Omar Shriners based in Summerville, SC. Any comments or hard feelings should not be directed towards the wonderful Shriners Hospital.
I called the person in charge of the cook teams who acted as if he knew nothing about it with a promise "to look into it". The attitude indicated I would be waiting a very long time in hearing back. All that matters is that we have a contest organizer that does not honor their prize checks and the reason is irrelevant to me. The day after the contest I did have some issues about vending there which was resolved by our team packing up and leaving, however, vending the day after a contest is a completely different issue than the contest itself. The contest was over....a completely separate issue and doubt this was the reason.
The two checks totaled $600 and we have pissed more than that away at many contests on eating out and booze. Principle is the guiding factor here and we'll see how the two sanctioning bodies handle this since they have been notified (KCBS & SBN). They have not had enough time to investigate nor determine the corrective action; however, it is scary to know teams spend as much money as we do competing and that the sanctioning bodies may not have the backbone nor "teeth" to enforce the sanctioning agreement. We shall see how all this plays out.
Other issues such as power, water and turn-in mishaps are numerous and won't be discussed here. However, it is the responsibility of all organizers to provide sufficient volunteer labor to assist meeting the needs of the contestants and public which we did not see at this event.
