Just Provided my First Refund to a Client

[S.Horton]

Well, I just passed a milestone.

Just gave a customer her money back.

Bottom line, I put this photo up for sale, and setting aside how aggressive the crop was, it isn't even in focus. :cry:
http://midnightblue.smugmug.com/photos/162842772-L.jpg

Customer purchased an 8x10, too. Ouch.

What I did was refund the money, then find every shot of that player, by hand, edited each one carefully, put it in a private gallery and hoped for the best.

The shot above I offered back as this shot, for possible use on a mug, shirt, etc. It is what I'd do if it were my own.

http://midnightblue.smugmug.com/photos/192916039-L.jpg

[S.Horton]

Big lesson: slow down. This never should have happened.

[michael_]

sometimes in business especially in small business you have to lose to win, but yeah as you said slow down, i will only put shots up in my for sale gallery which i know will be ok printed at any size.

I offered a refund to a client last week for a print (12x18 gattaboard mounted), the prnting company screwed it up not once but twice, first time it was damaged in the post because they didnt bother to package it properly, second time somehow it was the wrong shot (they reprinted it for free but charged me extra for the shipping), the client placed the order and paid for it on the 21st of July and it was finally ready for delivery on the 5th September, i think that is unacceptable and even though it wasnt my fault i offered him the refund, he refused to take it, the odd thing to come out of it, he refered 4 new clients who all placed print orders yesterday, lucky for me i have a new print lab where i can check the item before it leaves their premises.

live and learn i say, lucky for you it wasnt something major and in the end the word should get around that you sorted the issue.

[S.Horton]

They'll remember the effort over the money in the end; integrity matters.

BTW, smugmug did an awesome support job as well.

[Croasdail]

Don't think about it too much. It's just part of the business. Last year I shot league shots for a local soccer league. I took shots of over 500 kids. Of those I had about 40 kids who didn't get there trading cards on time because they were messed up by the printer, and 8 were not happy with their shots. I reshot 5 In the end, I had to refund to 3 of them. All in all, I was pleased to have it turn out that well. That's less then 1% that I was not able to make happy. That will work for me.

[S.Horton]

Ah, yes, that's true. This year's volume is about 400-500 photos; one bounce isn't bad at all.

What I do know is that bad news travels about 9X as fast as good news.

I'm definitely a perfectionist so, yeah, I'm unhappy with ever posting that shot at all and went over-the-top to make sure that customer sees a big effort to correct the mistake.