Never again... Adorama

I just want to vent a bit. One of my business I own is wedding photography. I had a wedding on Sept 10th. I suggested to my client that for a guest sign in book, they should use their engagement pictures to make a photo sign in book. I ended up choosing Adorama to make my book, and I also ordered a large print for the client. The order was placed on Aug 30th. I paid for the expedited Service (it says 2 days on the website), and 2nd day air shipping. It said estimated delivery to be Sept 6th, Tuesday.
On Tuseday the 6th, I still haven't gotten any shipping info. So I called... they told me the order was finished friday, and it will be shipped THAT day. I understood that monday was a holiday, they said I'll have it be thursday. And I will get tracking info by mail shortly. Wednesday... nothing, I called. They said, it was actually finished Tusday, and it was "probably" shipped, but she'll ask her manager for tracking info. They also said that the expedited Service can take up to 5 days and that was the 5th business day so they technically didn't go over their expedited service timeline.
Thursday Morning, I called again... they finally verbally game me 1 tracking number code. Which it say 2 packages will be arriving end of day on the 9th.
Well... At 5pm westcoast, I got 1 package, the large print. I called UPS, they said even tho it said 2 packages, there was only 1 tracking code means only 1 package was picked up. So I had to tell my client on their wedding day that they won't have a guest book.
I called Adorama, told em calmly about the whole situation..., no apologies, "let me find out what happened, I'll call you right back..." That was yesterday morning.

Why are you using them for a wedding client to begin with? They are not a pro album company even for guest books. Good enough for family vacation photos but thats about it.

I wanted to check out their new photo albums, it looks better than most online photo books like my publisher and things like that. The time frame wasn't enough for a proper pro album order. The client was only looking for something less boring than a blank guest book, but didn't really care to spend a lot for a super fancy one. Just pics to look at while signing is pretty much their whole idea.

It's really irrelevant that he was using it for a wedding, they shouldn't have kept telling him that the order's done and will be shipped when it wasn't.

Bummer. Hard for a vendor to lay low with bad service in the WWW era.

LOL... UPS just knocked on my door with it. I have a feeling Adorama is going to fight on returning my money.

That sucks! I'd definitely complain and get your money back.

nactos wrote in post #13098856
LOL... UPS just knocked on my door with it. I have a feeling Adorama is going to fight on returning my money.

Send it back with a cover letter saying they have 24 hours to credit your account or you will have it reversed.

Now you know what NOT to use them for.

10megapixel wrote in post #13098929
Now you know what NOT to use them for.

...but it sucks to go through that to find that out...

Hope it all works out.

I do agree Adorama screwed up, but the second package being late wasn't their fault.

well, after tracking the 2nd package's movements. It seems like that when they told me on wednesday morning that the order was finished and sent off... they actually only had the picture ready. and the book was ready AFTER the pick up by UPS. It was scanned as ready for pick up at around 6:30. Then for whatever reason, it was blank from then til 6 days later. Some how the information of the where abouts of this package for those 6 days are erased. Hmmm.... what is this, a conspiracy? Can they just erase information like that?
So they never picked it up, my book sat at Adorama and forgotten until thursday, it takes 2 business days. It got here yesterday but since I called Adorama to complain, they put a return to sender hold on it (there's a signed code to return), but then 12 hrs later, it became rescheduled to today.

nactos wrote in post #13098656
The order was placed on Aug 30th. I paid for the expedited Service (it says 2 days on the website), and 2nd day air shipping.

Firstly please accept my apologies for the frustration and inconvenience which was caused. I appreciate that I'm unable at this point to change your experience but I'd welcome the opportunity to look into what went wrong and why, so we can learn lessons for the future.
However, I will need your order number - could you please email me: Helen@adorama.com

BTW not sure if this is relevant, but looking at the Pix website, I see that expedited service for photobooks appears to be 2-4 days, rather than 2 days (and prints is 1 day).

Once again my apologies and I look forward to hearing back from you.

PS I've also replied to your posting on FM forum.

Sounds like the communication from Adorama wasn't quite up to standard, but the lesson you should learn from this is not to leave things to the last minute. Over and over again I hear stories of people ordering equipment to arrive the day before the wedding, it doesn't turn up, and they go all "woe is me" about it.

Part of being a professional is organisation and planning, planning for the worst case, not the best.

Never ever TRY out a new vendor on a client.