The Picture People almost lost my business

We had a 2:20 and 2:40 appointment today — one for the girls’ 6 month pictures and one for a family set of pictures.

I picked this time a month ago knowing it was “around” the best time for the girls — between naps, etc.

I was forwarned by my boss that last year, she’d taken her daugher there and it was a nightmare. I’ve never had problems before, but went in expecting it to be business. Not only was it business, it was poorly managed and their estimate of how behind they were was ridiculous.

We got there at 2:10 and our pictures were started at 3:00pm! By this time, the girls were ready for meltdown and sure enough, that’s what they did, starting with Emily. We tried bottles, hugs, funny faces, and nothing.

Since Em seemed happy in our arms, I suggested we do the family pictures first and see if we could calm them down. It worked… a bit. We managed to get three family portraits done and tried the girls again. Got one out of them, one of them with Joseph and when we tried them again, they wanted nothing to do with it. They cried and cried and cried.

So, we got one more shot of Joseph by himself and called it quits. I was thoroughly pissed off, because if we’d been taken for our pictures when we got there — at our appointment time — we would have gotten all the pictures I wanted!

Oh, and while we were “waiting”, there was a point when there were no people having their pictures taken at all! They were all working the folks coming back for their printouts! VERY BADLY MANAGED!!

So, upon our return to pick up out prints (at 7:30 pm) I told the girl working there that I wanted to talk with the manager. I explained the problem, the issue, what I didn’t get out of it. She, of course, offered to re-sit the pictures, but I just don’t have time for that. So, she gave us lots of free sheets.

Sheets at this particular photographer cost $18! With the Christmas coupon and the Smilestones (quarterly pics for the girls) and the freebies, I only bought 2 sheets but ended up with 7! 🙂

The manager apologized and said there was no excuse to today’s problems, but explained that there is nothing they can do when people choose to just not work. They are plum out of luck and unfortunately, she wasn’t the manager on-site at the time, so she can only help after the fact.

She hoped that she hadn’t lost our business — to which I said she hasn’t, but that I really hope this doesn’t happen again.

We’ll be scanning the pictures eventually to post!