Circus Coming To Town Along With Complaints
McKINNEY (CBS 11 NEWS) - The Piccadilly Circus is coming to North Texas. Thursday afternoon crews were busy getting everything set up for the big show at the Myers Center in McKinney starting Friday.
From an elephant extravaganza to motorcycle madness to cirque artists, Piccadilly is promising big acts. But, the Better Business Bureau of Fort Worth says it doesn't deliver.
"A high wire act was described being 3 feet off the ground, "explains John Riggins with BBB of Fort Worth & Tarrant County . "In general, complaints are saying that they can do a better job themselves of having a circus in their backyard than what they attended."
Riggins says complaints have been pouring in from across the country and so far the BBB has received more than two dozen.
Circus goers have said that the shows started 90 minutes late, and that there were no tigers, no elephants and no contortionists as advertised. There were also complaints about ticket prices and confusion over tickets.
"These tickets that use the term free on them, when you show up at the actual circus cost money, as much as $38 bucks," says Riggins.
The circus is gotten a "D" rating from the BBB. The BBB assigns letters "A to F" to businesses based on a number of factors and complaints.
Piccadilly sent some businesses around Fort Worth a batch of tickets to give to customers. The circus will be at Cowtown Coliseum next week, but as soon as the warning went out, businesses tossed those tickets.
"We laid them on the desk in the front office," says Jim Ratterree with Ratterree Heat and Air. "Then we got the warning and threw the tickets away." Ratterree says his customer base is important. "They were also there for customers who walked in. Had a customer gotten it, and it turned out badly, it would have reflected badly on us."
Piccadilly Circus is based in Florida. It's a one ring traditional circus which travels to more than 200 cities a year.
"With the two shows playing on an average of seven days a week, it is sometimes hard to have every act be exactly the same," says Spokesperson Miranda Schlake with Piccadilly Circus. "Sometimes we may get customers that get highly upset because they expect to see one specific act that may not happen to be in the show that day. We try our best to keep the show exactly the same each show time and each town."
Schlake says they try to address every complaint but there are no refunds.
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