Bribery At The Palace?

I can't quite believe this, but some of my performers have just been unbooked for an engagement at Venue X, (let's just say it may or may not be a building belonging to the British royal family), on the grounds that they are not on the list of 'pre-approved performers'.

A girl from one of the Big Banks had booked us for a performance at Venue X, only to be told a few weeks later by Venue X that we weren't 'approved'. (In 2 years of dealing with some of the most prestigious buildings in London, I've never had this problem before).

Well duh, I thought, let's email them and ask them nicely if they wouldn't mind considering adding us to the pre-approved list. Then we won't lose the engagement, and the girl from the Bank won't get shouted at by her boss for losing the deposit. After all, having heard the demo tapes on the websites of some of the agencies' quartets who are 'approved'... [coughs, politely]

So I fire off an email to Venue X, then another. Days pass. I phone; a receptionist says ominously that 'we generally only work with people who bring us business', but she will pass on my message. More days pass. I phone, leave another message. Eventually, someone from Venue X phones.

"I'm afraid we can't add you to the list. Generally, we only assess new suppliers a couple of times a year, so you'd need to send a proposal..."

Huh?

"... and then of course blah blah... blah blah... security checks... blah blah..."

Get to the point.

"... and our usual arrangement is that 10% of the rate our suppliers charge to the client is returned to us."

Ah. So that's it. You want my money.

Essentially, this woman was telling me that she was forcing me to cancel several hundred pounds worth of performance, having wasted considerable amounts of my time and indeed a small amount of money over the previous two weeks, on the grounds that I was not approved to give financial kickbacks to Venue X in return for recommendations.

OK, I'm somewhat biased here, but is this really ethical?

I understand the notion of a finders fee, and that it can usually (not always...) be an honest way of working. If you really believe in something, it can be a very helpful way of connecting new people together. Even ViolinMP3.com has a few affiliate links to Virtualsheetmusic.com on it, whereby if visitor visits the VSM site and subsequently buys some music, a dollar or so gets sent ViolinMP3's way.

But here, I was being blocked from performing at a considerable cost to myself, so that someone else could line their pockets by recommending an [arguably less refined] ensemble at a higher price. Is this right?

If I'm being overly sensitive, I'd like to know. I've opened up comments on this post if you'd like to tell me what you think. But my gut feeling doesn't like this.