Studio 1 Photography Studio One Photography Scammed! Promises broken, wedding photos never seen or received, $100 deposit never returned, 7 months after wedding still nothing. Salt Lake City, Utah

Dear Lea:

Obviously your expectations were not met, and for this we apologize.

The photo booth promotion was a failure and we admit it. We only ran the promotion for about 6 weeks or so. Stationary photo booths are not our core competency and we found out the hard way that when you try something new, even if you give it away, you can fail to meet expectations. (In fact - giving it away just compounded the problem.) There is a reason photo booths cost $600-$1000 for a wedding!

For the record, we took some fairly significant steps to insure our marketing efforts did not use the words, "win, won, prize, etc." but we get that you perceived it to be such. We apologize for that.

I have replied to your email with an explanation of how you can receive your deposit refund and disk immediately. There is no delay in refund processing or disk processing so please come by the studio Monday - Saturday 10a-7p and we will process (and would have processed) your deposit refund and your disk order on the spot.

The photos have been available for pick up since June 28, 2011, and your deposit refund has been available since April 28, 2011.

If you will let me know when you will be there, I will have your disk ready for you so that you do not have to wait for it to be burned and I will personally process your refund for you.

I am looking into who your photographer was. We have not had a complaint about our photographers being unfriendly, but I assure you we take your complaint seriously. For this I apologize and will take corrective measures.

As far as communicating with the studio: I searched our emails and the last one I see from you is dated a few days before your wedding in March. I don't have any record of you coming to the studio, and if our receptionist tried to answer questions in July over the phone about things she did not know the details about, I apologize. Our receptionists have fought us on this issue for years. They think they are trying to be helpful, and rather than ask a manager, or the right person (department) they try to "help" customers right away, but what they haven't figured out is that when they give incorrect information it makes things worse. We are working on this.

Last but not least, we have extended an offer to take family photos for you this Christmas and will include an 11x14 and 25 custom Christmas cards on the house.

I understand that you may not wish to take us up on this offer, but if you give us an opportunity to make up for the failure, I assure you that you will have a much better experience this time.

I sincerely hope you give us a chance to make this better,

Russ Smith
Wedding Coordinator
Studio 1 Photography