On April 20th, I rented one of Roland's photo booths for my wedding in Santa Rosa, California. I had nearly the same experience as Kara from Minneapolis, who also filed a report here.
Before the wedding: Horrible communication. I called Roland a couple of times in regards to the specials he had running on his website that were out of date, and never received any return calls. The (I assume automated) e-mail I got back after checking availability said, "Remember our FREE GUEST BOOK special is only good until the end of this month, February. Just enter in promo code FREEBOOK." This e-mail was sent to me on April 15th. I wanted to pay for the book if it was not indeed free at this time, but did not receive any return communication.
I wanted to get the guest book to put the duplicate photo strips in, but did not get one because he did not return my calls.
Day of the wedding: Still no communication from Roland or confirmation that the photo booth would even be there. Upon arrival to the wedding site, the booth was set up in a different location than what I had specified. It was placed at the back of the building, and not near the entrance as I had requested. The operator told me that this was because of wind, and even though it was just as windy where he set up, I decided not to let it bother me.
I don't think that the operator had ever worked with this booth before as well. He was a very nice guy, it was apparent that he had not worked with this equipment before. I have seen ads on CraigsList.org from Roland looking for photobooth operators, and I believe that this was one of those cases. The booth broke down on many occasions, spewing out photos that were completely washed out or solid black. Friends of mine at my wedding were helping to get the booth working again on more than one occasion.
This was really bad considering that the gifts for our guests were glass coasters with a place to put the pictures from the photo booth in them. I came home with a box of coasters because people didn't get their pictures. Some of my guests had gone up to the booth 3 or more times to find out that it was not working.
After the wedding: I got two CD's supposedly containing all the pictures from the day of my wedding, one of which had 17 1/4 sessions on it (4 pictures for each session, 69 total images), and the other had nothing. I immediately contacted Roland, and he did return an e-mail telling me, "We will send you a replacement disc, I am sorry for the inconvenience." on April 29th.
I e-mailed Roland again asking about getting my photos, and asked if they would be posted online, his response was, "We do not do web site hosting, but will burn a CD of your photos and get that to you, typically it takes about a month because the booth travels and takes a while to get back to headquarters." He also stated that I should call instead of e-mailing because I would get faster service. He has not returned ONE of my many phone calls.
On the FAQ page on his website, it clearly states the following:
How long does it take for photos to be posted on the internet? Can they be password protected?
Two weeks or less and yes most galleries are password protected.
Can we get a copy of the images taken by the digital photobooth on a disk?
Yes all photobooth rentals include a CD or DVD of all the photos taken at high resolution,
which will allow you to make enlargements up to and beyond 16x20" easily.
It is now October 9th, almost 6 months after my wedding. I still have not heard anything from Roland since MAY 15th. I still have not received a CD with my photos, nor is there an online gallery for me to view the photos. The only photos I have seen from the 120 guests at my wedding were the 17 1/4 sessions I got on one of the CDs. 17 sessions out of at least 50 according to the operator. I've seen approximately 30 out of the 120 people that were there in the photos from the photobooth. There should have been closer to 100 sessions and 120 poeple, but it was down so much.
I have sent multiple e-mails and made multiple phone calls, and Roland's choice is to ignore them all. I've tried to play nice for almost 6 months, and now I am just fed up. I would hate to see someone else have to go through this ordeal on what is supposed to be the happiest day of their lives, and have to get pissed off every time they think of their wedding day because they STILL haven't seen any of the pictures that their friends took for them to see.
Do NOT rent from this company, they hire the operators off of Craig's List, so they are not familiar with the equipment, and they will ignore your e-mails and phone calls. Their customer service is totally non-existent.
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