<p>Simple question and then I'll post the back story. Should my wife and I take a couple to small claims court over and outstanding balance ($250)? This would be on a principle basis more than for the money.<br>
My wife and I started doing photography a little over a year ago, and this is the 5th wedding that we have shot. Never had a single issue with the others and we charge what we believe is a great rate ($600) and dont claim to be the best photographers on the planet, but everyone has loved our work so far.<br>
We shot a wedding for a friend (high school years) and in our contract, and charged $100 as a retainer with the remaining balance of $500 being due the day of the event. The event came and the clients were a mess. Groomsmen showed up 20 minutes before the ceremony (instead of the hour prior that we had been told), so I had to rush to recreate some photos of them getting ready while my wife was doing the same with the bridesmaids.<br>
The ceremony came and we took plenty of beautiful photos, but again, afterwards they didnt stick to the schedule. We were supposed to have an hour of uninterrupted time to do formal shots with the usual arrangement of bride+groom+parents, grandparents etc. Well, they decided that they would rather socialize. I tried three separate times to remind the bride and groom that we needed that time foe formals but was told to wait each time, finally after insisting that we get started, they grudgingly accepted. At that time we had about 40 minutes left to do the formals on scene. We managed to get those done as well.<br>
We stayed and shot the reception where we captured all the traditional dances such as Groom and Bride's first, Mother and Groom etc and they were great. Here is where we made our first mistake, we allowed them to put off paying us until the photos were delivered.<br>
Fast forward two weeks; we had a flash drive ready with over 150 high quality edits that were consistent with our artistic style. We decided to include some extra novelty photos (these are for friends right? pssh) that were not edited. Messaged the Groom told him the photos were ready and that we would trade the photos for remainder of balance ($500). One day before the agreed meet day, he messaged with a sob story saying his kids were sick, had to go to the doctor, payed a bunch of money out of pocket, etc, and asked if we would take payments. *Cringe. This being an old friend of my wife whom I didn't know, I let her make the call. We decided to trust them and gave them the flash drive for half the outstanding balance (250). <br>
Couple days later I get a rude message from the Groom saying that his wife hates the photos, we are missing bunch of shots, blah blah blah. I respond politely saying that "Im sorry to hear that, but could you be more specific, told them we take pride in our work and will do everything in our power to make sure they are 100 percent satisfied. At this point the wife sends me a demands list of a bunch of photos that she feels are missing. Sigh...<br>
I offer to take the flash drive back and compare the photos we gave them to what we had on our cards and told her "I cant guarantee we have all of them but I'll see what we can do". We ended up giving them an additional 30 edits (about 5-10 more hours editing time for us). I give them the photos and a request for the outstanding balance to be payed within 1 weeks time explaining that we had fulfilled our contract to the best of our abilities and would not perform any additional work without charging for it. <br>
That was a week ago. Groom sends me another nasti-gram today saying that he is still not satisfied, will not pay the remaining balance, and that it was our job to make sure that the photos turned out great and we should have cracked the whip more at the wedding and so on. He offers to give all the photos back for a full refund or says I can just basically suck it up because he isn't paying.<br>
Thats the story, now the big question what would you do? I havent responded to him yet, I'm outraged, feel like we went above and beyond to accommodate their every demand and feel like he is just ripping us off and doesnt want to pay.</p>
<p> </p>
