First Unhappy Bride

The solution is to give her FAIR options and let her decide. I think the best options that show you are doing everything to cam to accomodate her is to offer:
a) a discounted photoshoot with her dad however she wants. I say discounted off your normal rates, not free, but for cost(time/materials) +a little profit on top like say 50% of your regular profit. So say your normal rate is $100/hour and out of that $50 is roughly cost (time) and the other $50 is profit, do it for $75/hour. Something fair.
b) offer to refund your profit portion of your rates. From your post above it seemed you charged $1250 for the wedding, at 4 photographers I would say cost would be $200/photographer=$800​, so offer to refund the remaining 450, so that you take no profit..... and she gets no photos at all. Basically like cancelling the contract for the wedding day to begin with.
c) offer a few extra 8x10's or something

What you must not do is refund her half the money like she wants. Basically she is trying to re-negotiate the contract after the fact and if you let this happen it will hurt all photographers in the longrun as more will expect to be able to do this.
Think about it. If I pay $50,000 for a wedding at a luxury hotel, can I go back the day after the wedding and say the place wasn't worth $50k and I want to only pay $25k??? No they would laugh. THat is what she is trying to do to you. You agreed on a price, she accepted the contract for that price, you honoured your end of the contract, you get the money.
There is nothing she can do about it, she owes you the money and would lose in a second in court. And regardless of what you do, she will never become a positive reference. You could give her all her money back and she will still mention how you missed "the most important shot"

I talked to her today, and she asked.. have I talked to her husband yet?
of course I said no.. she said that they both are still wanting 50% refund.
and if I dont pay it ASAP, they want 100% back..

I said I could give 100% back, but I would get all my photos back.

$100 refund or nada.

haha whatever. i work in customer service and deal with these types all the time. she's scamming you, guaranteed. no way would i give her her money back. these types of people get away with this stuff all the time. stick it to her and don't do it man.

My husband and I are in agreement--as long as the contract has a "no specific image guaranteed" clause AND you've done your due diligence in offering other options (which you absolutely have), at this stage our response would be:

"We're sorry that you're unhappy with the X (fill in descriptor here) photograph. As stated in our contract, no single image can be guaranteed. We've offered options A, B, and C--if none of these are acceptable to you, we will have to abide by the contract you have signed, which has been reviewed by legal counsel & states that no refund will be granted in case of missed images."

Knowing full well this boils down to the polite way of saying, "See you in court!" We're not interested in the type of referrals we'd get from a client like this.

(Hubby's actual response was unprintable. His second response was, "you can kiss my extraordinarily pale a**!")

Whatever you do, your next communication should be sent via snail mail with receipt confirmation. Email they can always claim they didn't receive, verbal communications can be counted as hearsay in court, if it gets that far.

Good luck & do let us know what happens.

spcalan wrote in post #4025780
And she is mad because she cannot use proofs to make 8x10, or any other prints..
because of a little @ sign and my name on everyone of them.
ha
when I presented her with the proof album, she conplained about the @ sign and my name on each of them, because walmart or wofl camera wouldnt print them for her.
I said that is why I have the @ on there, to save me.

That says it all right there. Dad was difficult to work with, Hubby doesn't work, and she just wants to steal your work by copying it at Walmart. I would always overlay a copyright watermark on proofs I was letting out of my sight just for this very reason and I would do it at an angle so they couldnt just scan it and crop off the edge. I agree with others you really don't owe her a thing. If she doesn't want to take the $100.00 you offered then just walk away. Sad that she is really trying to screw you for the $ because Hubby don't work.

spcalan wrote in post #4052673
I talked to her today, and she asked.. have I talked to her husband yet?
of course I said no.. she said that they both are still wanting 50% refund.
and if I dont pay it ASAP, they want 100% back..

I said I could give 100% back, but I would get all my photos back.

$100 refund or nada.

What happened with the agreement? Did she make that agreement without ok'ing with Hubby? This really sounds like a bad situation and I do not envy you. So what does she have now for prints? Is it just the proofs with your watermark on them?

She has the proof album, that has the watermarks.

basically she is bluffing me into giving her 50%. which I am not letting up.