Metal Anarchy

Left To Suffer and Seven Hours After Violet frontman Taylor Barber has been accused of scamming fans out of vocal lessons. The allegations were spurred by a Reddit user, who claims to have spent $80 on a lesson that never happened. Other users have since shared similar stories as well.

The original poster said the following:

“A bit ago now, a Taylor Barber was putting out advertisements to give vocal coaching lessons on Instagram. At the time, they weren’t as popular and I’m sure money was tight. They asked for 80 dollars up front for an hour long lesson and scheduled it with me. They bailed on the lesson and many attempts were made to reschedule but every appointment was bailed on either by him just never reaching out, or him telling me they were too busy. After 2 – 3 cancellations, I asked if I could just get my money back as they seemed to busy (and I believe they genuinely were). He told me he was out of money due to being on tour and said we could reschedule next week or he could pay me when they stop touring. We set a date but he never reached out on the said day which was a pretty common trend.

Life eventually got busy for me as well since I was moving states and after multiple more attempts of scheduling a date, something always came up where the plans fell through. After 2 years of sparsely messaging back and forth attempting to schedule an appointment, I understood this lesson was probably never going to happen. A few months ago, I offered instead of a refund they could throw $80 of merch my way and we could just call it even. Multiple attempts have been made at this solution as well and nothing has ever come of it despite me providing a shipping address and size info they requested.

I obviously know I got swindled out of the money and I’m not wanting to fuck the reputation of the band/Taylor up as they do seem like genuinely cool guys and their music is great. My main concern after making my initial post on the throwaway account is that others may have felt similar to me who were also scammed. I did some searching online multiple times for other posts of scams occurring and found nothing. This made me feel like it was probably a one-off situation and I continued to attempt scheduling appointments or compromising to get some form of reimbursement. I know I’m a massive pushover for letting it drag on this long and it’s honestly embarrassing for me as well to make such a fuss out of $80, but I realize now it is more important for me to make sure no one else gets scammed.

Thanks for reading, I can answer questions if needed.”

You can find screenshots and videos of the exchange between the fan and Barber HERE.