Issue with a certain chabad rabbi. Who to complain to?

Mama Bear

Wed, Jan 24 2024, 9:37 pm

Orchid wrote:

It's actually 100% central to her question. She NOW knows the answer is no, there is no central agency, but when she typed the post, she didn't, so her question makes total sense as stated. For those people saying she should edit the title post now that she has her answer, that is the weirdest thing ever. If I say "MIL treating me unfairly" and then it turns out, the posters show how she isn't treating me unfairly, I am obligated to to edit the title? Weird.

Further, you're saying it's strictly a business issue but the people all upset at OP are the ones saying she should fargin because it's tzeddakah. OP would love to consider this strictly business, but no one is letting her.

I hadnt read the further information that there was more to the story. Now I know the whole story. Hope it all got resolved.

amother

Ruby

Thu, Jan 25 2024, 3:40 am

amother OP wrote:

I'm trying to understand where the loss was? Again, I canceled well in advance and he easily replaced us. He's probably turning away dozens of people at this point. Like I mentioned earlier he didn't want to reopen reservations because he would get swamped with interest.

Where exactly is the loss? That they had to cross out in their book "family A" and replace it with "family B"?

They didn't order or prepare any more or less food. At this moment they are completely sold out.

I don’t know about them but we are constantly busy keeping a bunch of balls in the air at our Chabad house. To give an example of the diversity of these balls, in one week, we can be arranging a burial in our own community (that means we are also the shomrim and doing the Tahara), arranging the burial for someone in our community’s parent who lives across the country, keeping up with our visits and deliveries to the elderly people in the community, having students in and out all day to put on tefillin, running our preschool and Hebrew school, evening classes and events, and weekly shabbos meals with dozens of people. And yes, we also do shabbos catering. And our kids are home all day.

We would love to even just break even with any of the paid endeavors, but we often operate at a deficit. I can admit that it could probably feel frustrating if someone kept messaging me about a refund. Not even because of the money, but because it means putting everything on hold to take care of it. Would we still do it? Of course but as amother sunflower wrote, on a day when you barely have time to breathe, it can be hard. When we host Seders, we do it all ourselves (no hired help), so we are setting up, putting together matzah and korach packages for each person, making entertainment so people stay engaged, of course cooking lots of food and making seder to go kits for anyone who is homebound that year. All for about 100 people. I can imagine that if someone signed up for the Seder and then backed out and wanted a refund, the last thing I’d want to be doing is stop everything during that crazy week and take care of it. I don’t even break to go to the bathroom or eat during pesach season! We’ve never had this kind of issue with people and I imagine we’d take care of it no matter how frustrating because we’d want to keep the peace, but I’m just explaining how such a request might come across. I’m not being defensive. I truly don’t know how the interaction went down and haven’t read all the pages to see if more info was shared but just sharing a glimpse of the behind the scenes.

I hope you enjoyed your vacation!

amother

Ruby

Thu, Jan 25 2024, 4:22 am

amother Cadetblue wrote:

Being a Chabad Rabbi is one thing. Once you you open a business selling food it's a BUSINESS! I don't care if he makes money or not. When asking for a refund that is rightfully your in any industry do you check to see if there making money or not?

I’m not sure I agree with this. While true that not all businesses make money, I think this is a different category. I’m not going to address his tone which I don’t agree with. We’ve had people send us dozens of emails and we always remain polite and um not sure why he couldn’t have as well.

But about your comment, we run a preschool, charge for it, work at it all day and don’t make a cent personally. We have a Hebrew school that we charge for and bring in just enough to pay the teachers we hire and the costs involved in having a HS. Again, we don’t make a cent. We often have people ordering shabbos meals from us or meals for business meetings and even ask us to deliver quite often. Again, we’re not making money here. Just hoping to cover costs. When we make a Seder, we’re asking $25/person which you know is a joke when you factor in wine, shmura matzah, a 4 course meal, all the paper ware and cutlery, etc etc. And of course we never turn people away if they can’t pay. We maybe make a dent in what it costs us to make pesach with rhe $25/person coming in and then fundraise the rest and hope people will believe in what we do and support it.

I’m not saying she shouldn’t have been refunded. We’ve always refunded people who have cancelled, although I’m sure it would be aggravating if they expected it to happen on erev YT. I’m lucky if I get a shower then! I just disagree with what you wrote about it being a business.

amother

Ruby

Thu, Jan 25 2024, 4:42 am

amother Vanilla wrote:

They didn't go there to open a catering business, but this aspect of it IS a business.

Would they be happy if noone ordered food from them?

Certainly not. Because they do want the revenue this brings in. The revenue might be used to fund their kiruv activities, but the service itself is still a business.

Ok but what I think you’re not addressing is that most Chabads are operating over a dozen different “businesses” all at the same time. It’s impossible to expect any 2 people to keep up with the demands of that many “businesses” and yet here we are. We try really hard to do the right thing always but I know we’ve dropped the ball on people before because we’re juggling so much. And sometimes the reactions of the people who we dropped the ball on hurts because we really are trying our best.

(To clarify, when I say dropped the ball, I’m not talking about not refunding. I mean something like not returning someone’s phone call until it’s too late or offering condolences to someone on the passing of a loved one but then forgettin to follow up to see how they’re doing because we became quite involved with other peoples issues . Stuff like that.)

amother

Thu, Jan 25 2024, 8:33 am

amother Ruby wrote:

Have you ever not refunded a food booking that was cancelled 10 days in advance when the booking can be replaced?

Have you ever made a cheshbon to not refund as I've seen ima's say here on the basis that:

It's a hassle to switch one booking for another.
It's an expense to have someone manage the bookings and that person will now have more work.
Any other reason I'm not thinking of?

Also, I'm pretty sure some chabad's make money on shabbos meals. The price is pretty high. This is not a critique. They should try to make money when they can like anyone else, especially if they are not running like a business in that they don't turn people away for financial reasons as a regular business would.

cnc

Thu, Jan 25 2024, 8:54 am

amother OP wrote:

You're working under the assumption that they get the ingredients and food products at the same price as your local grocery. If they're in places where there are not too many Kosher food options they're having the stuff imported/ shipped to them and are paying a pretty penny.

amother

Sunflower

Thu, Jan 25 2024, 11:31 am

cnc wrote:

Guests (tourists, but also locals) cancel on me all the time. So I have started asking tourists to pay in advance. (really not a lot! I see some other chabads asking for way more money, but I find it hard to do that. We do give the option to donate extra amounts and many people do that)

Its true that food costs more out of town. (some things). But if a guest cancelled on me 2 weeks ahead or even a few days ahead, its usually not an issue, I haven't defrosted chicken, and made food.

Its the guests who tell me friday night, oh, it looks like rain tomorrow so we are not coming for lunch. Or: I met my cousins uncles old school friend in shul tonight and they invited me, is it ok if we cancel on you? Or, they just don't turn up without telling me.

amother

Ruby

Thu, Jan 25 2024, 12:00 pm

amother OP wrote:

No, I haven’t done any of those things and notice I didn’t say that you were in the wrong. But I definitely have had it happen that we’ve had to do something on the computer/processing/clerical end of things when we were swamped with work and didn’t have time to sit at our computers to make the necessary changes.

It could be the some do make money. I don’t doubt that. But if you’d see the prices we pay for what many consider to be basics…..there have been a few times when we catered meals for a special big event and I was literally embarrassed to give them the price because it felt like so much $$$ and we weren’t even making anything!

amother

Latte

Thu, Jan 25 2024, 3:24 pm

I think there's also a difference between shluchim in isolated places that won't get much tourism, and places that are frequented by tourists. If you live in an area where a lot of Jews will come as tourists, I think the chabad will possibly get more touristy and business like. If you essentially have enough tourists that you end up running more like a restaurant, and people are paying very high prices, it does become more like a business, and less a chessed.
And the impression I get from the op, is the manner the 'rabbi' handled the situation was the issue, more than anything else. It doesn't sound like he was being overly accommodating or friendly.
I don't understand why people feel so defensive that there can be chabad shluchim who aren't perfect and they have to keep pushing op that she can't be right. There will always be someone, no matter what sect of Judaism they come from, that aren't role models of what a good upstanding Jewish person should be. And it's important that people can accept that it can happen and it does exist.

B'Syata D'Shmya

Thu, Jan 25 2024, 6:41 pm

amother Latte wrote:

But you still haven't heard the other side of the story.
And one incident doesn't mean he isn't a good upstanding Jew....