dmfoto says:

I have pondered about how to respond to this negative review from Judy and Rob. The first thing and you will find this odd to hear, I’m glad that she wrote this review. It can be a learning lesson for everyone, brides, photographers and parents.

Yes a learning experience, I encourage anyone that is getting married to review the details of your contracts. You will enter into one with almost every vendor that you deal with. Wedding services are a unique business. 90% of all wedding take place on a Saturday, (that is a guess on my part) and since this is the case everyone in the wedding business has a limited number of Saturdays that they can work each year.

When a wedding vendor agrees to work with you for your wedding, most have to then block that date and will tell others that contact them wanting a service on that date they are not available. So we turn down potential customers for that date, because of this, most wedding vendor have a no refund policy.

Wedding are booked from 6-18 months in advance. (As far as the wedding date for Judy and Rob, we still have not booked that date)

Because of this we have contracts that commit a customer to pay for a package of service that will be provided on the wedding day. When we make that contract agreement each vendor will have different refund policies. You as a bride should review the details of the refund policy and ask questions to know what happens if you cancel your wedding. It will vary with anyone that you work with so be sure you know what happens.

Our cancellation policy is on our wedding contracts and to be sure that the policy has been read by the customer we have them initial that they have read and agree to that clause in the contract. We have a lot of items that require the bride to initial and acknowledge they understand and agree to. If they have questions we are happy to explain what this means.

A perfect example I had a brides Dad call yesterday, he had the contract and was ready to sign and send it in with his payment. He asked about the cancellation policy and what the exact amount of the retainer or non-refundable part was. For his daughter’s package that amount was $1750.

After we discussed the details and he was informed that this is for a cancellation, not a rescheduling he was fine and sent the contract with the first payment for the package.

Dmfoto has been in business for over 9 years, we have photographed over 350 weddings. We have an excellent track record and very happy customers. As they say you can’t please all of the people all of the time.

We have had weddings cancel before, the bride and groom break up is the only reason this has happened. This couple just decided they did not like us. That hurt, but we can’t control that.

All I can say is we did everything we could to try and work with this couple. We were not mean, rude or anything like that. If not giving money back from a canceled agreement is mean or rude, I guess in Judy’s eyes we are not nice people.

I can give you the name and email address of 100’s of extremely happy brides that used our wedding photography service. The main issue here is related to the engagement session and items they wanted that were not part of the contract. So more advice, be sure it is on the contract. If you have it in writing then you have something to use if a dispute comes up.

Here is a copy of the contract text that Judy initialed.

“Upon signature, photographers at dmfoto reserves the time and date agreed upon. For this reason retainer payments are non-refundable, even if the wedding is canceled or the date changed for any reason. The retainer is the fee that is charged for wedding photography service on your wedding day. This amount will vary depending on the package purchased. The retainer amount will be split into your wedding package payments. Efforts will be made to accommodate rescheduled weddings and apply payments.”

Initial here_______ This is were this bride wrote her initials.

They never asked what this non-refundable amount was and please note it says payments (with an “s”)
I would have told them at that time the amount for the package they purchase was $2400.

If you want details of the engagement session problems and why things really went south, ask me and I’ll post a link to view all the proofs from the engagement session and you can judge the quality of what this couple got.

We love weddings and have always worked with our customers. They made a decision to cancel and did not consider what this would cost them.

I made efforts to resolve this, none worked.

DAVE Marks

www.dmfoto.com

dave@dmoto.com if you have questions about this issue.