Annemarie has been playing phone tag with the small, family-owned photography business that she hired to document her 2008 wedding. No, that’s not a typo. The couple was busy purchasing a house, having a baby, and doing new-married-couple things. They got back in touch with the company and finally received a beautiful album in spring 2011. With her name spelled incorrectly on the cover. By the time the photographer got around to contacting the company that produced the final album about options, they…had gone out of business. Annemarie is stuck, and doesn’t know what to do when almost four years have passed since the wedding, most of those spent playing phone tag with the photographer.

I got married in August of 2008, and used a family-owned photography company that was very affordable and had great photo album options. They were very attentive, and the even went smashingly. We went on our honeymoon and contacted them after and they said to give them three to five months to get things together. Through no fault of theirs, it took way longer than that for us to contact them, simply because life got busy; we bought a house, my husband got a new job, and we had a baby.

When I finally contacted them about the album, their response took an extremely long time to get to us; apparently they were in Florida for a month with their daughter, and weren’t able to get back to us. As they are family owned and I know it’s only two employees, I understood (after all, the delay was originally our fault) and we finally met up to select pictures for the album and bigger photos in 2010.

It took several months for the final album to come in. In the interim, the album company he used went out of business (his words). At first I was hesitant about his suggestions of a new flush mount album, but wound up being thrilled with the new option; I wound up getting more for my money, essentially, because he went with a new more modern company. I went to pick up my album in April of 2011.

The album was absolutely stunning, with one glaring issue: my first name was spelled wrong on the front cover. In all of the proofs I’d OKed, no front cover was present. Every time the photographer used my name, he spelled it correctly, so he said it was company error and that he’d get it fixed. He suggested I take it home and show my family since we’d been waiting for it so long and then drop it off back at his home to be fixed. We did just that; took it home for a few months and then dropped it back off at his home (a month because we wanted to be sure he was home and played phone tag a lot about timing to drop it off). It was dropped off at the end of 2011.

I e-mailed him May 5th about the album, as I’m pretty anxious to get it back. The response I got from him was:

Capri – your album mfg – is no longer in business. However, I am in contact with their corporate hdq. to see what options they can offer.

I have shown your album to several alternative sources. All of them offered similar solutions that required physical disassembly – with possible damage to the inside front and back covers – and creation of a new cover; only available in their standard colors (brown???).

Another alternative would be to create 2 overlays – plastic or leather – for the front cover and to add the correct embossing to each. I suggest 2 to keep all of the text the same type face, and, to artistically balance the overall ‘look’ of the album. At the moment, this is looking like the best option.

I am working on a solution and will get back to you with additional details as soon as I have them.

My concern is that this company went out of business two weeks ago; on their website, it indicates they were filling old orders and taking new ones up until April 20th of 2012. I’m really upset that he waited almost a year to get on this (I wonder if I hadn’t e-mailed if he’d have bothered ever fixing it) and I’m not thrilled with his options. I want an album that’s correct, not some hacked-together job.

What are my options here? I sent him a response that indicated my disappointment with his timing, etc., but I’m worried that when he responds again, I’m not going to be satisfied.

Before anyone blames “the OP” for the length of time it’s taken to get this done: we’ve played phone tag and e-mail tag over the last few years regularly, as the business is literally just him and his wife out of his home. No where in my contract is a time-line stipulated, and most of the delay has been the fault of the photographer, although some has been mine as well.

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