Erik and I met with our photography company on Saturday for 1.5 hours (S2 Photography). This is in addition to the 1.5 hours that we met with them in August as Stephanie can attest too. (Sidenote: She really won the best-bridesmaid of the month award during that trip up to E's parents'.) Anyway, the last 2 months working with our photographers have not been stress-free. Part of it is our fault in the sense that we decided to upgrade our package after meeting with the owner - we wanted to discuss offline about the higher price but still wanted to lock into the date at least.
The 2 months of stress consisted of me having to follow-up with the owner, Jack, every 2 weeks or so to get our new contract sent to us. When it finally arrived (about a week ago), none of the information that was supposed to be on it was and my name was spelled wrong! I'm not an expert on business practices, BUT spelling the customer's name wrong is a big no-no! I know I have a difficult to spell name, but Meagh-E-n? I'm just going to stop there because I'll become incensed about it again. (Huge pet peeve of mine!).
So, I called Jack to set up a meeting for this weekend - Saturday morning - because he's obviously not good at communicating over the phone. Also, every time I talked to him on the phone, it was like the movie Groundhog Day and had to start over fresh why I was calling, when my wedding was, etc. After a client calls about 4 times not very happy, wouldn't you remember who they were?! Anyway, so Erik and I get to the studio about 10 minutes before our meeting and Jack is nowhere to be found. Fortunately, his office manager Chris is there, but Chris has no idea who we are (Jack didn't tell him about our appointment) and says that hopefully Jack will be back soon. Apparently, Jack got called to do a photo-shoot for that morning and didn't bother to call us to prevent us wasting our time.
The long and the short of it is that Erik and I had to negotiate a new contract with Chris, the office manager, because Jack never showed up - or wait, he did, but it was an hour and 1/2 late and we were about to sign the new contract. Chris gave us a lot of push back to some of the things that Jack promised us and this morning I realized why. Their pricing has changed significantly, and even though we are no longer getting everything promised in August, we are still getting a better deal than anything they offer now. It's just frustrating because I tried to get more specifics in writing initially, but Jack flat out refused to put more detail because "he would remember," which basically means "because I hope you forget."
Anyway, it's resolved now but not without a good dose of stress.
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