I have also submitted this report to, another good (Australian-based) site. Just spreading the word... Realquick, the figures: My friend got a $500 voucher in a showbagat a business breakfast. The voucher was for a photo shoot at Viva Life PhotographyStudios. She had to pay a $50 deposit when booking the shoot. The shoot was done at the Viva Studios inKew, Melbourne. Immediately after, she was pressured into signing a deal for an album plus 3extra sides for a grand total of $2,670. This takes into account the $300voucher. And that 300 is not a typo. The other $200 was for the shoot itself, apparently. When she got home she wasnt even awarethat she had ordered 3 extra sides. After much telephone horseplay, thestudio grudgingly dropped these. A final bill of $2175. She had to pay $864.60on the day, non-refundable, with the rest in installments. Now, the detail: My friend feels the photos are goodquality, if generic. Pasting your own face onto the images in the brochurewould be cheaper. Her impression was of a studio that takes the same stockpictures of everyone, regardless of body shape or customer wish. So a shortperson will be shoe-horned into a leggy model pose, regardless of how thislooks. To her, the process felt industrialised; a package designed for speedand repetition, not art.
Viva stores are individually ownedfranchises. On paper the company is based in Fremantle, Western Australia, but there is no Head Office as such. This makes it hard to complain up the foodchain. A phone call to Fremantle got us little more than information onstarting our own Viva franchise! As an aside, Vivas website provides somefigures on what a franchise might cost you. It seems to me excessivelyexpensive and weighted in the franchisors favour. This may explain why, outside WA, there arent many franchises (three in Melbourne, none yet in Sydney) and why the Kew Studio at least, is so money hungry.
But Im self-employed and appreciate aclever business model: Offer vouchers as advertising. Thevouchers carry a large but abstract value. Make people pay a deposit fortheir photo session so they wont back out. Design a website where the onlymention of cost is most people spend between $275 and $ creating theimpression that its up to you and can be cheap. The options are endless andwe will suit the product to what you want All studios have a wide range ofproducts to meet any budget. The same website also has fifteen pages onstarting your own Viva franchise!
On the premises, surround the person, dontstop talking, distract, flatter, push documents for them to sign while they aredoing something else. Show them no written Terms and Conditions. Offer nocooling off period, then get a collection agency to handle the payments so yourcompany is spared any nastiness from customers who have well and truly cooledoff. Viva has clearly studied consumer law and knows how to stay just this sideof it. After the shoot comes the stonewalling. Theres no backing out, because the balls are in motion and your album iscustomised and the photographer is just about to slot your pictures in. Hellor high water wont stop these balls. And sure enough, twenty-seven days later, we receive an email that the photos are now ready. And pick up by this weekendwould be appreciated. Perhaps the funnest part of the experienceis the staff themselves. I confess an admiration for actors who will not dropthe script. These people are marketing drones from some updated chapter of theStepford Wives. No matter what the question, what the situation, they respondwith simpering happy talk. Over the phone, I found it hard to tell if wastalking to the receptionist or the answering machine. The fun consists in this. If, like me, youdont mind being rude when you have been wronged, then you can say whatever youlike to these clones and they just suck it up. Im convinced I could set fireto the foyer and they would merely melt to the sound of polite babble. But its worth remembering that the babbleis just another form of stonewalling. Talking to a robot may be amusing, butnot when the robot has 800 of your dollars, and wont budge on the other 1200. And Viva is about the money. The icing camewhen I told them I, not my friend, would be picking up the photos, and I wouldtell them when. They emailed back, offering to provide a quote for a courier. After all the ill-feeling, where I would be saying to smooth things over, howabout I just send them to you? They say wed be delighted to charge you fordelivery. My advice is, unless youre a Kew millionaire, look for a studio that provides more personalisedwork, minus the circling saleswomen. Then again, an encounter with the StepfordWives does have a certain eerie compulsion.
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