Friday, February 27, 2015

Our Photographer LOST Our Wedding Photos!

When we first met Nikki at Lensview Photography, she was so nice and personable, and we loved her photography. During this time - from the engagement photo shoot to the wedding day - she was so accommodating and went out of her way to make things easier for us, always telling us that if we needed absolutely anything, to just let her know. We were recommending her to anybody and everybody that asked. I would love to say that after she lost our photos, she went out of her way and bent over backwards to make things right...but I can't because she did not.

Three and a half months after the wedding we finally received a link to view our wedding photos online. The end of the gallery showed 4 pictures of us at our reception...and that was it. I texted Nikki to ask her if she was still working on those photos or if they were being put in to a new gallery for us to look at, and it took her two full weeks to get back to me to let me know that my reception photos were lost - I have no pictures of our first dance, cutting the cake, bouquet toss, garter toss, and none of all the friends and family that came in from all over the country - NONE! She claimed that she had "never had this happen and it is completely unacceptable to me. I will continue to work on them in the mean time I can offer another option. I know you had family there taking pictures with their cameras if they have these images I can edit them for you if this is something you would like if I can not find the others".  So after paying her $1350 and her loosing our photos, she thought that editing other people's photos would be sufficient compensation.

Needless to say, I was upset, angry, and frustrated. These are not pictures that we can just go back and re-take. In an email to Nikki, I said that I appreciated her being honest with me about losing our pictures, but since we did not receive all of our pictures and because of the nature of the pictures I wanted to discuss getting our money refunded for our wedding session. I told her that I was totally up for discussing the amount, but we trusted her to take the pictures, not our family and friends. It took another 2 weeks for her to get back to me, in which she responded: 
 
"I do understand and am definitely willing to work with you on a partial refund. I do not feel that a full refund is necessarily fair or warranted. In the contract it does state that there would be 6 hours of wedding day coverage. I went back and went over the time table that I was able to be there which was from 10:00 am to 11:00 am for the hair and make up at the salon, I was asked to be to Tanganyika by 1:30 which I arrived at and began taking pictures. I stayed until 8:30 that evening which would have been a total of 8 hours. Per the contract I do offer extra wedding day coverage starting at $125 per extra hour which would have been a charge of $250 for the extra coverage I was there." - I would like to stop here a moment and mention that not once did she come up to EJ or myself to let us know we were over our time and ask us if we wanted to pay the additional charge. Also that additional time/charge was never discussed after the fact.
 
 "The last photo that I have in the gallery was taken at 6:48 pm which was fully fulfilling the contractual agreement. The total package price you paid was $1350 which was to include the 1 hour engagement session which was at Tanganyika and the 6 hours wedding day coverage, (1 hour at the salon 10:00 am until 11:00 am and then 5 hours at the wedding 2:00 pm until 7:00 pm). Please do take into consideration the extras that were given such as an extra hour long engagement session to include your doggies which we were not allowed to bring to Tanganyika so an accommodation was made," - When we made up our contract we specifically said we would like 2 sessions - one at Tanganyika, which was included in our wedding package with Tanganyika, and one session with our dogs - Since we spoke about this numerous times, I assumed that this was taken into account at the time the contract was drawn up - apparently not.
 
"as well as the extra time during your wedding that I stayed late or the time spent driving from location to location." - Seriously?! You're just going to write off that mileage and gas anyway.
 
"Also in the contract it states that there will be 200 edited images plus an additional 100 images for having a second photographer. In your gallery there are almost double the images there should be. There are 595 total images versus 300 per contract. I do feel completely horrible that some of the final images for your wedding day have been lost due to a malfunction of software/hardware and trust me when I say I am so beyond sorry. I do feel that more than what was in the contract was completed however I understand that at the end of the day there are photos missing and I would be happy to do a 10% refund of the $1350 which was paid, as well as your extra images," -
So what I feel she's saying is she could have taken 1,000 pictures of the outside of the building and her contractual obligation would still have been fulfilled because she gave us more than 300 photos... I know at the counter top place I work at, if someone is unhappy with their tops, we ALWAYS tell them that they just paid for us to install them, not to make it look good, so we've 'technically' done what you paid us for and we can't do anything else. *eyeroll*  NO!! It's called customer service! Now I am a firm believer that the customer is not always right, but this was her screw up, and she should be doing whatever it takes to make this right, not hiding behind technicalities. 

So the next day I text her and asked her if we could meet for coffee one evening so we could discuss this further, because track record shows she won't get back to me in a timely fashion. She text me back and said she was just super swamped with photos sessions, dance lessons, and other commitments that emails would work best due to her hectic schedule. So I took about 2 weeks to think about the offer she made us. I was so mad, but I just wanted our pictures (which I still hadn't received while this whole ordeal was going on) and to be able to move on with our lives. So I emailed her and told her we would accept the 10% refund and our remaining engagement pictures. So a week later, when I still hadn't heard a word from her, I text her to make sure she had received my emails, and instead of just telling me what was going on she text me that she had emailed me the 'other day' (which I obviously did not receive) and that she would just resend the email that evening. Sooo 2 days later, I finally got an email from her saying she had everything ready for me and that she could meet up that next week. I emailed her back and told her I was free any evening and just to let me know what worked for her. So when I didn't hear back from her I text her again, and she informed me that she hadn't had time to check her emails - she had a photo shoot on Saturday and she reserves Sunday for family - even though she was posting pictures of her photo shoot on her facebook page Sunday morning. Anyway, EJ was able to meet with her and get our pictures and a check for 10% almost 6 months after our wedding.

The first impressions that we got from Nikki were that she was so friendly and would do anything to make our day special, and so we were shocked at the way we were treated when things went wrong. Her offers were completely insincere and communicating with her was like pulling teeth. We are completely appalled at how we were treated when this was her mistake. I think there are ways this could have been handled that would have made us 'okay' with the situation (face it, nothing is going to make up for those lost pictures), but instead she hid behind the technicalities of the contract and refused to communicate with us. Maybe I should have fought harder for more compensation, but I was so shocked and insulted by what she did offer. After this situation, I would definitely not trust her with any more of my special memories - if she loses them, so what, she was there so technically she did her job, and after the way we were treated and the lack of customer service and communication that was provided after she messed up I truly don't believe she deserves to have her own business.