After seeing a mummy's compliments on the good services provided by a lady photographer of 'Photographicalmemories', I have decided to book a 3hrs photography session @ $160 for my son's birthday party in Sept.. I'd liaise with a lady photographer from the group and upon paying the deposit for the session, I was referred to another photographer (this time is a guy) by her. I was caught entirely by surprise and felt weird as I didn't expect her not being the one taking the photographs. Then again, this might be their practice to assign any free photographers from the group, so i did not think much but proceeded to engage their service..
But unfortunately, I am not as lucky as the mummy who engaged the lady photographer..
One day before the party date, my hubby SMS the photographer to remind him about the birthday shoot. However, he did not reply us at all. Confused and worried, I just waited through the night and still... no reply. On the morning of the actual day itself, my hubby called him again at around 10am but the call did not get through as the photographer's hp was off. My hubby waited for another 30 mins before he made another call (but this time my hubby used my hp as he thought maybe his hp has some problems calling out). However, the photographer's hp was still off...
My husband and I began to get nervous about the photographer not turning up for the shoot since we are unable to contact him. As this is so last-minute, we will not be able to get another photographer since the party will start at 2pm.
After a long wait, he finally returned 'our' call at 11 plus (strange though as he'd returned the call to my hp instead of my hubby's one -- probably he thought he'd new business coming and he want to attend to it first??) and upon knowing it's us, he sounded surprised but said that he will be there... That's good as he is not missing...
30 mins before the party started, when we are setting up the area, the photographer arrived. He introduced himself as 'Mr X' As we are tight on time, we just briefed X on how we are going to setup the party area and that he can start to take pictures whilst we are at work. X went around the area, took some pictures and then began to speak to some of my guests who came early.
At first, we did not think much of that as we are really busy but after an hour plus into the party, we realized that X is not actively taking pictures as he should be (this is not the first time that we'd engaged a photographer and we've now sensed something amiss). Instead of spending the precious time to capture the birthday moments, X went around many of my guests to introduce himself and giving them his name cards. We were offended as we thought he should be focusing on his job to take better photos for my son's birthday party rather than promoting his services.. And what's worse is that he even asked some of my guests, including me to pass him our handphones so that he can help us 'like' his facebook page... We felt that his actions are very rude n really unprofessional.. He treated his customer's event as his road show while we paid for his service.. I have many guests who had feedback to me on this same issue, on his negative service after the birthday party...
Seeing X to be rather passive, we approached X to ask him to take more pictures (of the kids, our family photos as well as of the buffet setup). However, X told us bluntly that he normally dont take any pictures of the Buffet Area as there's nothing much to capture.. We nearly fainted... !!! (We had spent a lot of efforts decorating the various aspects of the party room, including the Buffet Area -- We'd decorated the Buffet Area into Adults and Kids Buffet corner, decorated with balloons and the least we'd expect the photographer to void all efforts by saying this...)
To add on, during the cake cutting session, one of the guest's children (a small kid aged around 4), was standing in front of the cake and was in X's way. X openly shoved the kid out out his sight rudely. My hubby and I were shocked by his gesture and told X on the spot not to be so rough. As the kid is just a kid and although he may be playful to be getting in X's way, but why pushed a kid so hard?
After the whole event ended, X informed us that the CD will be ready in approximately 2 weeks' time. On the 13th day, my hubby SMS X to check with him whether the CD is ready but AGAIN, there is no reply from X.. The next day my hubby called him and ask about the CD and this time, he said it's ready. My hubby then probed further on whether X received the SMS the day before and X replied that indeed he saw the SMS, but did not offer an explanation on why he did not reply to it. (Seems that customers do not matter a lot to X..)
After previewing the CD, we must say that X's photography skills are not bad. However, we are still disappointed as X he only captured 300+ plus raw photos (and edited for us 128 photos) for the 3 hours' services. This is not what we expect as when we recalled the previous mummy's compliments of 'Photographicalmemories', the mummy said that although she hired her photographer for only 2hrs, she got unlimited photos with around 250-300 edited photos. Ours paled by a lot in comparison .
Also, the photographs are missing in a lot of the setup details like the party room, the banner, the buffet area, the customized goodies, as well as the surroundings. There are also many guests and kids that X did not captured in his photographs. Being parents, when we put so much efforts to setup the party, we really hope that the photographer can capture every details for our future memories... But sad to say, I have to find all these in my own iPhone & even had to go around asking my friends whether they have captured it after seeing his CD output..
That day was a special day for us and we cannot turn back the clock. The reason for hiring a photographer is to trust him to be capable to help us to retain that special moment but now all these words are too late.. If only X had been more serious about his job and was active in taking more photographs, this would be a perfect birthday party for us...
Anyway, we decided to SMS X to feedback about his service. X called back immediately upon seeing our comments of him and was very rude throughout the conversation. He questioned us saying that we cannot expect too much since we are paying so little and if we want to expect more, why didn't we engaged other photographers. (Of course, if we had expected X to behave so unprofessionally, we'll gladly pay more to engage better photographers).
He also commented that we really cannot expect more photos as he has done photography sessions for many times already and 300+ photos is a standard. Also we ought to know that he will only edit half of these photos (So he thought that 128 is half of the photos??? Still wondering how he came up with the figure..). When we try to reasoned with X that other similar photographers of his group offered photography service for 2 hours but took more photographs than him, X told us bluntly not to compare. (But why is X afraid of comparing? We are comparing Birthday Parties vs Birthday Parties right? And also with someone from his group right? Unless, he is the one who always take the least number of photographs and he is worried that this might affect his reputation if he admitted it?)
X also implied that he has been tolerant of us considering that we always call to pester him (My God... We only called him 1 day before the actual day to confirm the session and is this wrong? He mentioned to us that it will take 2 weeks to collect the CD and when we called him on the 13th day to find out the status, is this unreasonable as well?)
We tried to reason with X that he ought to treat this as an honest feedback so that he can improve his services in future but X is very very unreceptive, sore and rude about this whole episode. He kept insisting that he is right and that we are wrong until we are so fed up and tell X that we dont want to talk to him anymore but will post our experience on his facebook page to let everyone judge the case; only then did he tone down and apologize to us..
If he is not wrong, so why is he now worried and scared and change his tone only when we want to post our ordeal onto the Facebook? To this, he said that he is not free and do not want to clarify anything on facebook. Maybe he thought that we are so free to use our time to write this feedback?
Anyway......
To all... May be I am the only unlucky one but something to share with you all on my experience for your consideration..
Btw, "X" = XinLi / XL Photography" and he has since deleted all our photo in his Facebook..
