Difficult Client - How would you deal with this

[everlast]

Hi Everyone,

In a little less than 2 weeks we have a wedding to shoot. Just recently everything started to change in the way the client wanted everything done. Which is fine, something always changes and it's not a big deal as long as we're informed.

We tried to make a slight change in the way the getting ready pictures would be handled, we ran this by her and she said that if we do this we would have ruined her whole wedding day and really upset her,( all we were suggesting was seeing if the groom could push their getting ready time back by a half hour to allow for everything she wanted.) our first reaction was WOW! We did find a way to make her happy and have it work out for us in the end. Now she's telling us out of her 30ish combinations of family shots, how she's like them spread out throughout the day (before church, formals, reception) and now saying that she is to get all of the photos taken at the wedding as that's what she's paying for.

We've never encountered anyone quite like this, never had any negative reviews minus them not liking their free engagement photos and asked us to go through them again and check and see if there was any we hadn't given them.

I'm not sure in how to deal with her. I have a feeling she's going to be very bossy on her wedding day as well. I'm not handing over all of the photos, we'll take out all the obvious bad ones, I'm not wanting to hand over horrible quality photos as this will look bad on our company. Any suggestions on how I should go about dealing with her? We're all for client satisfaction, but when is going to far to please a client? Any help is greatly appreciated!

[BuddhaPi]

isn't this all laid out in your contract??

[BigFuzzy]

Please tell me it's not the same couple as from THIS thread...

Buddhalicious has it right.. what's in your contract. I always but the agreed upon timeline in the contract and only change things upon written agreement.

I feel this is going to get ugly for you as you're already in a tough position seeing as they didn't love the pre-shoot photos so therefore probably don't trust your ability/judgement. It's hard to crawl out of a hole when the client is unsure about whether or not you can deliver.

What did you guys agree upon and I/we hope it wasn't just verbal?

[Niresangwa]

+1 that all of this should be in the contract, and as a fall back, emails you can refer back to.

At this point however, stand your ground on everything. She has one recourse and that's to get rid of you. She's not doing that a couple of weeks out. The more over-functioning she is, the less stress she wants to add.

As soon as you start giving an inch, she'll probably rip you for whatever she can get. Be polite but firm (and hopefully have the contract or emails to back you up). Provide rationales as to why things need to be a certain way, and reassure her that it's the best way to do it.

If there's anything she's requesting that you can't defend not doing or changing, well suck it up, do it, and make sure you defend against it in the future.

No matter how much of a beast she is, you're in for this gig, so makes your case then get on with it. Figure out where you went wrong, then make sure it's discussed in the future.

[everlast]

Thanks for the replies so far.

We did not have photo selection listed in our contract to this point. It has been added since this problem arose.

BigFuzzy, it is not the same client. We dropped the other client, and lost the wedding planner in the process; but we felt this was not a huge deal as this was the first client he brought to us anyways.

We did have a contract signed but none of it had to do with picture selection. There is something in there that says we do not work from a posed shot list but if there are requested photos we will take care to get them. I think she just went overboard with her 30 must have shots. Usually we get these shots anyways, but she's telling us when to take them at what point during the wedding. However in her defense of the 30 posed shots she is giving us the time to get them.

We tell the clients that the reason we provide the engagement shoot for free is to get to know the client and what they like and don't like. We now have a way better understanding of what will work and what they're looking for on their wedding day. However I feel like she's going to find something wrong with the pictures no matter what, she once sent a really harsh email and then apologized the next day saying she was just having a bad day. She's very emotional and acts on that emotion.

My worry is she wants ALL of the photos. Obviously I'm not going to give her the blinks, blurs and horrible looking photos. Should I just tell her that she'll receive all photos other than the blinks blurs?

I think we're going to get bad feedback from these people regardless, and I'm completely prepared for that..I'm just trying to figure out how to do damage control from here on out. And pray that she doesn't cause a scene on her wedding day.