While I was out grocery shopping at Meijer (the Mason, Mich., location), a pleasant young woman approached me and fussed over my 5-month-old son. She told me that the store was offering a customer appreciation photo package — just $10 now and $6 later for a package of portraits. My husband and I had been discussing having some photos taken of our baby, and I thought that for $16 we might as well try it.
I made our appointment for a couple of weeks later. The photo session was held in an employee breakroom, I think, at the same Meijer where I had been approached. There was one background and one very harried-looking photographer. There was also a fairly large number of people waiting in line.
Despite being extremely busy, the photographer was very nice and took numerous photos. He seemed good at getting our little boy to smile. We were looking forward to getting our pictures back.
When we went to pick them up, though, I was very disappointed to see that the photo they had chosen to print for our package was far and away the worst one. (Everyone who's seen the pictures agreed with me.) There were a few other poses, which were much better. I've since had photos taken at a "real" portrait studio, and see that they are far and away superior to the ones from United Studios of America, however.
The worst part, though, was the very, very hard sell. The salesman kept pushing this outrageously priced canvas portrait package — I believe it was $400 for two of the canvas portraits. We weren't interested, so he kept pushing other packages. He even offered to let us pay for them in two installments. The problem wasn't the money — it was the insane price and the average photos!
We ended up with the package that was included in the $16 and three other 8x10 photos — one of our son, one of all three of us, and one of my husband and son. We were originally just going to buy the 8x10 of us as a family but the photographer said, "Oh, don't you want the ones of the baby?!" and I felt like such a bad mom that I felt like I ought to throw the others in, as well! We were allowed to purchase those for the shocking price of $25 per sheet. For comparison purposes, I've since seen an ad for one local studio that offers prints at $4 per sheet.
So we paid $91 total for a package of horrible photos and three OK 8x10s. The other three 8x10s aren't awful, but they have a very "school picture" look.
For comparison, we just got our family pictures done for Christmas at a very well-known, reputable studio in Lansing. We received two 10x13 portraits, three 8x10 portraits and tons of 5x7,4x6 and wallet photos, plus 60 Christmas cards, for $132. (That includes about five different poses.) They were much, much more attractive, we got to choose our favorite poses, and there were numerous backgrounds and props to choose from.
So while United Studios of America didn't technically scam us — we did get the package we paid for — they used hard-sell tactics and (I believe) deliberate bad photography choices to get us to buy very average photos for a very high price.
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