If you registered for any of the races hosted by the Liberty Run Group that was cancelled on May 14th and have NOT received your refund from Dave English, PLEASE fill out a complaint form and send it to New Jersey Consumer Affairs. If you received a refund from your bank or credit card, you should still fill out the form.

Attorney General investigator, Michael Meola, is investigating and cannot move forward without people filing complaints.
The complaint form (http://www.nj.gov/oag/ca/complaint/ocp.pdf) is on this website: http://www.njconsumeraffairs.gov. All complaints on this case will be forwarded to Michael personally.

Unfortunately the form cannot be filled online and needs to be printed out and either scanned/e-mailed or snail mailed.

Maybe next year the organizers of the Newport Half will offer a full as well.

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The guy is probably buried with requests.

Besides, someone's inability to contact them doesn't change anything. Active doesn't issue refunds, period. Your only option is to get it from the organizer.

Hopefully, he'll come through with the refunds. We'll just have to see.

In the meantime, there are at least six more running events in JC this year, including the Newport Half Marathon -- most (if not all) in LSP. We've got plenty of showcases for runners. ;)

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I haven't. I'm sure the posts are full of folks calling for a Senate inquiry, criminal prosecution, the organizer's head on a plate, or all three. I received an email telling me to send my registration number to request a refund. I did that, and I received a response acknowledging my request. I don't know how other people are attempting to contact them.

If you're looking for a 5K along the waterfront Club Metro Fitness Center is hosting on June 8th with all of the proceeds to benefit the American Heart Association. I'm the race organizer and I can tell you I already have all of my permits! :) Register on Active.com or Compuscore.com. Hope to have a huge turnout we are already around 100 runners!

Have you read the article linked below? Or, the Facebook threads? The organizer may have sent out an email telling people to contact him for refunds but, apparently, no one has been successful in getting in touch with him. Quite a shame, really. The race could have been a great showcase for the area. Lots of runners on this side of the river find ourselves having to trek into NYC for our road race fix.

Active has a clear No Refund policy that you acknowledged when you registered. The organizer has sent out emails to people who registered advising them to send refund requests to office@lrmg.org Include your registration ID number to prove that you paid.

Here's a good summary of the fiasco from a running blogger:

http://afastpacedlife.wordpress.com/2 ... scam-or-a-bungled-affair/

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Active doesn't get involved in refunds. You'll have to contact the organizers directly to get your refund.

Has the active network been issuing refunds? My credit card company tells me to contact them first...sigh.

Call until you get your refunds:

Name: Rose Phillips, Liberty Run Foundation Event Project Director

Email: rosiephillips3@gmail.com

Phone: (office) 606-834-0109, (cell) 843-360-1614

Name: Dave English, Liberty Run Foundation

Email: englishd10@gmail.com

Phone: 843-437-8924

I suggest everyone file a complaint with the BBB:

https://www.bbb.org/consumer-complaint ... e-a-complaint/get-started

also,

I suggest everyone write to JC telling them this was a scam until liberty run foundation gives you a full refund.

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Excellent! I love Ethical Community...will def sign up, thanks!

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Nope! No 5K, no wheelchair race, no activities NO NOTHING!

If you want to sign up for a legitimate 5k in Liberty State Park, The Ethical Community Charter School is having one on June 15th for $20! Proceeds benefit the school. I did it last year. Great group of people.

http://readwriterun5k.com/Read_Write_%26_Run_5K.html

The City received a number of refund requests emailed to the webadmin account. These were forwarded to the Liberty Run organizers. Their last communication appears below:

I apologize for the delay, but with the volume of emails we had coming in, your email went to the spam file. I have been slow getting through them and I apologize for that.

Our plan is to get everyone who wants a refund to them as soon as we can.

Initially we were going to try and refund through the registration site, but Active doesn't get involved with refunds as stated in their no refund policy, so the most practical way is to send us the place we can mail you the refund to this office@lrmg.org Just include your registration number so we can verify registration for our records. (yes believe it or not, we have come across quite a few less than honest people in this process) and we will get your refund out to you in the order that we received it.

Again, I apologize for having to put our runners through this process, understanding that there is a lot of effort and sacrifice involved but we are refunding and we will get it to you. If you?re trying to call us, please understand that we don't have a large phone answering service, it isn't possible to return all of the calls, it would take us to forever to get back to everyone and for that I also apologize.

Thanks
Dave
================

hope that helps - jm

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Their Facebook page has very angry runners stating there was no 5K this morning either. If you read their website, the spelling errors are huge and everywhere - it just all reads like a scam. Vague and laying blame on "Jersey City". It's disturbing.

So the 5k never happened?

Thanks for the article!

The JCPD told me this is a park police issue, so I went to the office in Liberty Park...all the park police would tell me is that the corporation never 'fulfilled their requirements' to host an event in the park.

I took that to assume the Liberty Foundation was never legit to begin with and it seems like your article is hinting at the same thing...

Yes, I def intend on doing that! I tried calling the actual company but got some guy on a cell phone...wrong number, very shady!

Well, BrightGirl if you READ the link you'll see that the half and the full were cancelled but that all the other activities were to continue as scheduled...

(Hmmmm Healy? Or the event organizers? Or Spectra?)

City, Race Dispute Liberty Run Marathon Cancellation

First-time New Jersey race scheduled for May 25 was canceled last week.

By Michelle Hamilton, Scott DouglasPublished May 19, 2013

On Tuesday, May 14, the Liberty Run Marathon?a first-time event through four New Jersey communities to raise funds for veteran groups and local charities?notified runners the marathon and half-marathon races planned for May 25 were being ?postponed? until 2014. ??

The change of plans, race organizers said, was the result of a last-minute announcement by Jersey City that road construction would not be halted as planned.??

Officials at Jersey City tell a different story.


http://www.runnersworld.com/races/cit ... -cancellation?page=single

"For the participants in the 5K race, the event is still going on as scheduled and is not affected by the Marathon/Half Marathon cancellation."

The 5K was never cancelled, just the marathon and half (also found from following OPs link):

The event has been moved into Liberty State Park and will follow the same event format with the Expo on Friday (5/24) and the Saturday (5/25) post-race festival with vendors, music a food. Liberty State Park will host the Liberty Lightning 5K and with the festival already scheduled to be in the park, it will be a fun time for everyone.

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Well, if you follow your own link, it says it's been cancelled.

Whoa, that's crazy. If you paid on a credit card you can dispute the charge.

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Did anyone else pay $100 to run the 5K (previously a half-marathon, but apparently cancelled due to 'construction') at liberty state park this morning??

Several other runners showed and JCPD had no idea what we were talking about when we called!

Here are the links:
http://www.active.com/5k-race/jersey- ... -fleet-week-festival-2013

http://www.libertyrunmarathon.org/

Anyone with info please reply!!!