We were approached at Franklin Mills mall bu a Nijah development scout to sign up our 18 month old daughter for a meeting with a development coordinator who would determine if she would be a candidate for modeling and acting. We received a call and arrived at offices in Huntingdon Valley off. First off, the offices were dark and part of a warehouse looking complex. There were many people waiting with their children, loud dance music on and offices that were bare, not a professional looking organization. We waited for 1 hr for them to see our daughter and when we were about to leave they had us meet with a development coordinator that was instantly smiten with our little girl and has us believe that she would a great candidate for modeling and insisted that we have her pictures take right away. They were extremely pursuasive, showed us pictures of clients that had landed jobs in jcrew, toysrus ads, target, and were confident our daughter could land these jobs as well.
After a few minutes we signed a contract for 3 looks and a photo shoot costing $1150, due immediately. After we paid and signed a few forms rather quickly, they insisted that my daughter have a photo shoot on the spot because they liked her outfit - this despite that my daughter was over tired and turns out was running a fever and sick. We took her in, she cried and i asked them if we could post pone for the later schedule photo shoot a few days later, but the photographer who was not very child friendly, came in with another woman who made silly noises and got my daughter to laugh a bit - this all took about 15 minutes after we were ushered out and left. I was disturbed that they were so pushy with my daughter who was sick. The next day I found out that Nijah is part of a larger organization called New Faces, all which use high pressure sales tactics to obtain money out of innocent parents that believe their child could be successful in modeling.
There was a lawsuit filed and settled in NY in 2006 by then attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Now reading the contract carefuly, i see why they insisted on having may daughter take some pictures so that they could claim $500 of the total amount for the 15 minute photo shoot of my crying and sick daughter. It read that if we decide to cancel - within 3 days by certified mail only - they would say they provided services to us and that they are under no obligation to refund our money. I found complaints for refunds under BBC and they are not accredited. We notified our credit card company and they are going to investigate the company to obtain a refund. I also called franklin mills to complain and they said they would put the complaint on record but would not doing anything else. Please do not get scammed by this organization.
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