We found Lindelle Studios through David's Bridal. I was very impressed by David's Bridal when I purchased my dress there, so I did not think twice about using the photography service they recommended
I was, for the most part, happy with our photographer (although, I had to direct him to take photojournalistic pictures, something we requested). The pictures came out nice though, so we were happy.
We were married at the end of June, and received an email at the end August saying our pictures were available online. I was sent an email with a blank order form and "directions" on how to order our pictures (basically the directions just said fill out the order form. Call us if there's a problem.).
It took a long time to pick the pictures with only seeing the pictures online. There were 364 pictures to look through and you had to continually go back and forth through pages, which was annoying and frustrating. We narrowed our pictures down to 70 for our album and 20 for each parent album. I emailed Lindelle for a new order form (I accidentally deleted the original email with the form) and they very quickly, sent me a new blank form.
The form I was sent did not ask me to put my pictures in any particular order, nor did it tell me to signify which pictures were 8x10s and which were 4x5s. I was confused by this, so I emailed the woman who had sent me the form to ask if I was supposed to do this (because I thought I was) and she emailed me back telling me that their designers would do that for me and that I didn't have to worry about it.
So I did as I was told and filled out the form as it instructed me to do, merely writing down the image numbers of the photos I wanted.
I submitted the order November 22. Yes, it was three months after our pictures had been released, but it took a while to get parents together to look them and for us to pick them, etc.
On the last Thursday in January I received a phone call from a Lindelle employee telling me that the original album we ordered was no longer being produced. Lindelle had "upgraded" their traditional album to a digitally made album (similar to something you can get on Shutterfly for $50). If we wanted to pay $300 extra, we could get someone to design the album for us and it would be "even better."
We didn't want to pay $300 extra. We were perfectly fine with the original album (the one with ACTUAL pictures in it) that we ordered. I told her this and she told me that they weren't making those albums anymore and if I didn't want to pay the $300 extra, than I needed to fix the order I sent in November because I was supposed to put my pictures in order and signify which pictures are 8x10s and which are 4x5s, AND apparently, our parent albums could not have any pictures that existed in our albums, since parent albums are made from proofs (We later looked at our contract and it did say this, but it being over a year since we had signed the contract, we didn't know).
I told her I was told not to put the pictures in order or signify their size and she said that would be true if I paid the extra $300. I told her I was fine putting my pictures in order myself and to please rerelease my pictures online so that I could do so.
When I asked about ordering pictures for the parent albums, so that I could have overlapping pictures, she told me I could for $20 a picture. I thought that was insane, so I told her I'd fix it.
She rereleased the pictures again and because it was a busy time of the year for me, it took me about a month to sit down and fix the order, but eventually I put the pictures in order and picked sizes (which was frustrating because of the specific layout Lindelle's album needed) and fixed the parent albums so that nothing overlapped.
Meanwhile, my husband was extremely upset that Lindelle had changed the kind of album we were getting. He liked the album we paid for that had actually developed pictures in it. Just before I sent the order back in, he called the woman I had spoken too and asked her if we could get the original album we paid for.
She said she could order an old album if that's what we really wanted, but said "But before I do anything, I never told your wife this, but you owe $300 in late fees."
She told him our contract stipulated that we were to have our order back within 30 days of when our pictures were released or we'd have to pay $10 for every week late.
We looked at our contract and found the small line of print that stated this, so we were willing to pay it. It was our fault afterall for not seeing this, but we were confused by the $300. We turned in the order two months late. It was due at the end of September; we turned it in on November 22nd. 8 weeks should be $80. Where did $300 come from?
My husband called the woman back and ended up spending an hour on the phone with her fighting. She said she was charging us from September to February, when I turned the second order in, since we turned in our original order in November and it was wrong (since it didn't have anything in order and no sizes were specified).
When we explained to her that we were told to do that by someone AT Lindelle, and that if that was the case, why were we contacted TWO months after turning in the order?
The woman accepted this and said she'd take off the late charges from November 22nd to the day that she called in January.
She was STILL going to charge us for February - the time we took to send in the second order.
She told she had expected us to immediately turn in our second order the night she called us to tell us to tell us to put the pictures in order and specify sizes. I took about hours to figure out the order of the pictures (because the pictures must be either 4 or 1 on a page - 1 being the 8x10s - and the pictures need to be in order of the wedding day - and with the pictures we picked, everything kept ending up out of order [for example, I'd be getting dressed AFTER I was walking down the aisle]).
When my husband asked her why she hadn't told us in January that we had been accruing late fees and that we had to immediately turn in the order that night or we'd accrue more, she told us it was not Lindelle's policy to tell their clients that they had late fees.
When we explained that it wasn't fair for us to KNOW that she wanted to second order in THAT night - that we can't read minds - she agreed, saying she understood everything we were saying. Nevertheless, if we didn't pay $130, we would not be getting our pictures.
By the way, there's small print on the contract that says if you turn in your order late (even a day), Lindelle reserves the right never to give you your pictures at all.
So we paid... That was February now it's May and we still haven't gotten our pictures.
I had never experienced such horrible customer service. They were mean and didn't care about how we the customers felt. All they cared about was their money.
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