<p>I wish I had found this review thread earlier! Thankfully I’m only out $50, and not the hundreds or thousands like the others. Folks should know that the Darrs are still operating, with Kristi operating <a href="http://smileclicklove.com/" target="_blank">smileclicklove.com</a>. My wife signed up for a photo session that she<br />found through her local mommies group. The session was on Saturday afternoon, 11-3-12. The premise was that Kristi had lost a family member, and these were fundraising photo sessions. She would take our pictures in downtown Hickory, NC and mail us a copy of the original files, in return for a $50 fee. We met her as arranged she took several shots of our family. We paid her by check, and we parted on good terms. Just as others found with her husband, she is a polite and personable lady to deal with in person, though very difficult to<br />get in touch with otherwise.<br /><br />As Christmas approached and it was time to make our annual photo Christmas cards, it occurred to us that we hadn’t heard anything from Kristi. So I went to her Smile Click Love website to send an email, but the email bounced with a “mailbox quota exceeded” error. I called the <a href="tel:866-702-8811">866-702-8811</a> phone number listed on her website, but that just<br />gets me to a voice mail service. I left a message, but didn’t get a call back (and still never have). We looked for her on Facebook, where we found an active page but were unable to send a message. I did find @kristidarrSCL on Twitter, where we had the following<br />exchange: <br />12-12: “Hey Kristi, your email address is bouncing due to mailbox<br />quota exceeded. We’re trying to get in touch.”<br>
Her prompt reply: “call me <a href="tel:866.702.8811">866.702.8811</a>”<br>
I called the number again and left a message again.<br /><br />12-13: “Thanks Kristi, that’s the one we called yesterday and also<br />today. Please let me know if you don’t get the messages!”<br /><br />Her prompt (final) reply: “I need your address to send your USB to :-)”<br /><br />So I called again and left our address on her voice mail.<br /><br />12-16 “Thanks Kristi, let me know if you aren’t getting<br />the phone messages.”<br /><br />12-21: “Hi Kristi, can you give us a call about the picture files when<br />you get a chance? [my phone number]”<br /><br />12-22: “Kristi, we are still trying to get in touch about the pictures<br />that we’ve paid for. Please call [my phone number]”<br /><br />12-24: “Kristi, I know the holidays are busy, but if you’re able to<br />get back to us it would reassure us that you haven’t just taken our<br />money.<br /><br />1-9: “I wish we’d found this before we paid you: [link to this thread]<br />still hoping for a refund, unless you still operate this way.”<br /><br />All the while we never heard back to her after that second tweet,<br />though she was still active on Twitter with tweets about other things.<br /><br />My wife posted a message to her mommy group to see if anyone else had problems, and it turns out that several people did. One got a few disappointing pictures, most got no pictures. My wife tried sending Facebook messages to Kristi’s friends and family to let them know that we were having trouble getting through and to make sure she wasn’t going through some sort of hardship that we didn’t know about. We’ve tried to communicate with Kristi through every venue that we can think of, short of driving over to her house and knocking on the door (though that would certainly have been on the table if we were owed as much as some of you are). Has she been out of the country on some exotic wedding shoot? Maybe, but that hasn’t stopped her from staying active on Facebook and Twitter with posts and tweets about other things.<br /><br />I feel disappointed that she didn’t deliver pictures in time for Christmas- and I feel angry that she didn’t deliver the pictures at all- but we could excuse those issues under most circumstances. Has she lost the memory card? Did she shoot the session with manual focus<br />or some other bad camera setting so that they didn’t turn out? Has she fallen ill and can’t find the strength to put the unprocessed files into a Dropbox or the mailbox? If there is a problem, why can’t we just talk about it and go from there? Everyone is unreachable at<br />times, but few people are unreachable for a month, especially when they are obviously connected and active on social media sites. Unfortunately, the major failure here is one of communication. Beyond those first few tweets, she has ignored us, and that is just<br />aggravating. Now that the holiday season has slowed, I spent some time to Google to see how many other people have had problems. That led me to this site, which has been very enlightening. <br /><br />If you have found this thread after you’ve paid money to one of the Darrs, let me offer my sympathy and hope it wasn’t very much. If you have found this thread because you are thinking about giving money to the Darrs, my recommendation is that you don’t. Is Kristi just a very poor communicator, or is she more deliberately evil? I don’t know and it doesn’t matter- both are very good reasons to not conduct business with her. The older stories in this thread show plenty of excuses- like the “third-party company” that booked their tour. I haven’t been able to find the excuse this time. I wish they would help me understand- why has it been this way? Will we ever get our money back? I’m not holding my breath, but if we do, I’ll certainly be back to let everyone know.</p>
Darr Photography Seminar
in Education & Resource
Posted
<p>I wish I had found this review thread earlier! Thankfully I’m only out $50, and not the hundreds or thousands like the others. Folks should know that the Darrs are still operating, with Kristi operating <a href="http://smileclicklove.com/" target="_blank">smileclicklove.com</a>. My wife signed up for a photo session that she<br />found through her local mommies group. The session was on Saturday afternoon, 11-3-12. The premise was that Kristi had lost a family member, and these were fundraising photo sessions. She would take our pictures in downtown Hickory, NC and mail us a copy of the original files, in return for a $50 fee. We met her as arranged she took several shots of our family. We paid her by check, and we parted on good terms. Just as others found with her husband, she is a polite and personable lady to deal with in person, though very difficult to<br />get in touch with otherwise.<br /><br />As Christmas approached and it was time to make our annual photo Christmas cards, it occurred to us that we hadn’t heard anything from Kristi. So I went to her Smile Click Love website to send an email, but the email bounced with a “mailbox quota exceeded” error. I called the <a href="tel:866-702-8811">866-702-8811</a> phone number listed on her website, but that just<br />gets me to a voice mail service. I left a message, but didn’t get a call back (and still never have). We looked for her on Facebook, where we found an active page but were unable to send a message. I did find @kristidarrSCL on Twitter, where we had the following<br />exchange: <br />12-12: “Hey Kristi, your email address is bouncing due to mailbox<br />quota exceeded. We’re trying to get in touch.”<br>
Her prompt reply: “call me <a href="tel:866.702.8811">866.702.8811</a>”<br>
I called the number again and left a message again.<br /><br />12-13: “Thanks Kristi, that’s the one we called yesterday and also<br />today. Please let me know if you don’t get the messages!”<br /><br />Her prompt (final) reply: “I need your address to send your USB to :-)”<br /><br />So I called again and left our address on her voice mail.<br /><br />12-16 “Thanks Kristi, let me know if you aren’t getting<br />the phone messages.”<br /><br />12-21: “Hi Kristi, can you give us a call about the picture files when<br />you get a chance? [my phone number]”<br /><br />12-22: “Kristi, we are still trying to get in touch about the pictures<br />that we’ve paid for. Please call [my phone number]”<br /><br />12-24: “Kristi, I know the holidays are busy, but if you’re able to<br />get back to us it would reassure us that you haven’t just taken our<br />money.<br /><br />1-9: “I wish we’d found this before we paid you: [link to this thread]<br />still hoping for a refund, unless you still operate this way.”<br /><br />All the while we never heard back to her after that second tweet,<br />though she was still active on Twitter with tweets about other things.<br /><br />My wife posted a message to her mommy group to see if anyone else had problems, and it turns out that several people did. One got a few disappointing pictures, most got no pictures. My wife tried sending Facebook messages to Kristi’s friends and family to let them know that we were having trouble getting through and to make sure she wasn’t going through some sort of hardship that we didn’t know about. We’ve tried to communicate with Kristi through every venue that we can think of, short of driving over to her house and knocking on the door (though that would certainly have been on the table if we were owed as much as some of you are). Has she been out of the country on some exotic wedding shoot? Maybe, but that hasn’t stopped her from staying active on Facebook and Twitter with posts and tweets about other things.<br /><br />I feel disappointed that she didn’t deliver pictures in time for Christmas- and I feel angry that she didn’t deliver the pictures at all- but we could excuse those issues under most circumstances. Has she lost the memory card? Did she shoot the session with manual focus<br />or some other bad camera setting so that they didn’t turn out? Has she fallen ill and can’t find the strength to put the unprocessed files into a Dropbox or the mailbox? If there is a problem, why can’t we just talk about it and go from there? Everyone is unreachable at<br />times, but few people are unreachable for a month, especially when they are obviously connected and active on social media sites. Unfortunately, the major failure here is one of communication. Beyond those first few tweets, she has ignored us, and that is just<br />aggravating. Now that the holiday season has slowed, I spent some time to Google to see how many other people have had problems. That led me to this site, which has been very enlightening. <br /><br />If you have found this thread after you’ve paid money to one of the Darrs, let me offer my sympathy and hope it wasn’t very much. If you have found this thread because you are thinking about giving money to the Darrs, my recommendation is that you don’t. Is Kristi just a very poor communicator, or is she more deliberately evil? I don’t know and it doesn’t matter- both are very good reasons to not conduct business with her. The older stories in this thread show plenty of excuses- like the “third-party company” that booked their tour. I haven’t been able to find the excuse this time. I wish they would help me understand- why has it been this way? Will we ever get our money back? I’m not holding my breath, but if we do, I’ll certainly be back to let everyone know.</p>