[Vickstar79]

Hi There

I wanted some advice from the pros! I've just started taking portraits on a commission basis, and recently did some portraits of a group of girls. As I took the group all together I only charged one booking fee and split it between the three mothers. I then charged for whatever prints they wanted, which they ordered after viewing contact sheets.

One of the mothers wanted a reprint on one of her pics because she wasn't happy with the way the colour on her daughter's dress came out. Obviously I wanted to make sure that she was happy, so went away, did some work on it, and send it off to the printers again. When it came back, she still wasn't happy, so I went off again to try to sort it out. When the prints came back again, I knew that she wasn't going to be pleased, as it looked like no change had been made.

I contacted the printing company and explained that I had made several changes, uploaded the correct picture each time, but still they seemed to be applying a correction to the picture that I wasn't happy with. They have now done a reprint of the picture free of charge, and I received it on Friday - and thankfully the colours are now improved as I wanted.

However, this morning I received an email from the mother saying that she was returning the original prints, she doesn't want the new ones and she is paying me only for the prints she has kept. So now I am out of pocket as a result of the reprinting I have done for her. I have paid for 3 sets of 2 large print , and even though I now have a set to give her she is only paying for about 5 much smaller prints. I have previously offered her discounts on the reprints as she has been put to such inconvenience, which was going to bring the entire job to cost-price.

I appreciate customer service is an absolute must in this situation, which is why I have continually kept the customer up to date on the process, as well as offering her discounts for the reprints, which she accepted.

Has this happened to anyone else? Is there anything that can be done at this stage, or is this part of the job and something I have to take in my stride? I want an outcome that everyone is happy with, obviously, not only because I need to build a good reputation which comes by word of mouth, but also because the customer is a friend of a work colleague.

Any help or advice would be very much appreciated!