As a photography studio we have a number of suppliers that we have to deal with specific to our industry, these include camera repair, various photographic gear and regular suppliers like canvas, prints and albums. So this is a quick tale of how two suppliers handled stuffups on their end.

The first is our canvas supplier who delivered a print so shocking in quality that I had to send it back, their reply was well we have to make sure that you are happy so we will reprint it for you. Pretty much to be expected. I picked up the new print two weeks later, you can imagine the joy that the client exhibited after being told that she would have to wait an extra two weeks, but we smoothed it over explaining that it had to be reprinted and I wanted her to get the best quality. Pick up the print, get told that in order for it not to look terrible (well, the said it in a nicer way, but that is what it boiled down to) they had to print on another type of canvas. Ok, fine, except here comes the catch, they will invoice me for the difference. Hang on, I ask for a quote, get a quote, charge my client the cost of the quote, you deliver something substandard, I complain and you charge me extra – so what? Now I should turn around to my client and say sorry, I quoted you for the crap quality and when I upgraded to acceptable quality I now have to charge you extra? Every piece that comes out of this studio is an ad for our work, there is no way I would let anything out that didn’t represent the quality that I would like the brand to project. So I swallowed the cost, but for the small bit of money that they made on the canvas, not even enough to cover the delivery cost of the canvas, they lost my business forever.

My album supplier on the other hand, sent an album to the wrong place – bit of a miscommunication as well as some technical difficulties and a byzantine system. The company reprinted the albums, sent them to the right place and sent me a complimentary voucher for another album. The client got two copies of their albums – I rescued the misplaced album and sent it to the client, and I got a warm fuzzy feeling that these guys cared about my clients and my business. So the album company still has my custom and will continue to do so despite the rand taking a serious dive, whereas if you’re a canvas company you’re welcome to send me a brochure and pricelist. If you’re a photographer who has had good experiences in the Joburg region with 1.5m+ sized canvasses please send me a link.

This entry was posted Friday, September 12th, 2008 at 10:19 am and is filed under Info, photographers.