While plenty of these businesses operate ethically, the VIP-experience space is poorly regulated. E ntertainment- and music-specific offshoots followed in the early aughts, and soon, the industry mushroomed: Even Live Nation, the biggest concert promoter in the world, launched its own concierge arm, VIP Nation, in 2011.
These boutique outfits started popping up like worms under new grass in the Nineties, when the internet allowed for the role of an integral hotel employee to morph into an online business model. And she’s certainly not the first rich person to overpay on promises in the world of concierge companies, which often cater to the whims and desires of the uber-wealthy. Whayne isn’t the first person to sue and settle with Confirmed360, a small, events-focused business based in Los Angeles. If she did anything wrong in the whole debacle, Whayne concedes, it may have been spending all that money without doing any research or really thinking about it at all - the way regular people might order a new coffeemaker on Amazon. That is, Lillian Whayne knows exactly what VIP treatment entails, and she knows she didn’t get it from Confirmed360.
NYC VIP ACCESS HOW TO
But while she and her friends might not be “big-hatted Kentucky Derby rockstars,” she says, “we know how to use the right goddamn fork, you know what I mean?” With her wild, uncombed hair - dyed fuchsia during the pandemic - and go-to wardrobe of oversized denim button-downs, it’s true she doesn’t seem like your average pearl-clutching, Southern-belle multimillionaire. “I think they thought they could get away with it because we all look like a bunch of rednecks,” says Whayne, calling from her favorite Louisville bar, where an elderly regular just spilled a beer on her. When she was told about Confirmed360’s firm no-refund policy, that was the last straw: She slapped them with a legal complaint - and got a settlement. Whayne squabbled with Confirmed360 to get that snafu fixed, but by then her friends’ trip had already been soured. On one day of the festival, two of the passes were actually rejected for being inactive. Next, Whayne says, a Confirmed360 employee dropped off six lower-level event passes that didn’t provide the backstage access they were expecting. C’mon, now! Roll out the goddamn red carpet.”
“I think there was a bag of rice, some potatoes, and a case of Bud Light,” Whayne says. She dropped an additional $30,000 with Confirmed360 to get the group a three-night stay at a grand desert château near the event’s Indio, California, grounds, which, she says, was supposed to be stocked with a smorgasbord of food and alcohol and even come with a private driver.īut when her friends arrived after a trip in Whayne’s private plane, the kitchen was basically empty. Through a company called Confirmed360, which supplies VIP experiences to superfans and high-income clientele, the Kentucky-based construction-industry heiress ordered six “artist-level” festival passes - the kind that get you backstage - to the tune of $6,500 apiece.
In the summer of 2017, Whayne, 55, decided to go all-out planning a trip for her friends to the 2018 Coachella music festival. It’s been years, and Lillian Whayne is still pissed off.
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