Photographer not sending prints

[MaltipooMama]

I appreciate this is a first world problem but I have ended up as a bit of a dog with a bone now and I'm not sure what best to do.

For our son's first birthday we booked him a smash cake photography session, contact with the photographer wasn't great leading up but the shoot went ahead as planned 13 weeks ago and it was great, really good fun. On her website she's made a point of saying that the session itself is "free", as it includes a cake (value £50) and 10 7x5 hard copies (total value £200) so essentially we've paid £250 for the lot. It's been 13 weeks now and the prints have still not been sent. Over this time I've emailed her 11 times to chase up and only four of those have been answered, saying she will do it on x day, so sorry they've not arrived etc, and still nothing. She last contacted me on 18th Jan to assure me I would receive them by the following Friday, and I've sent her several messages since then which have been ignored.

So I contacted the Citizens Advice Bureau who have helped me draft a letter which I've sent her today, but is she legally obligated to uphold the terms here (I.e. sending the hard copies), or can she just rip the letter up and ignore, and if so is there any way I can pursue this? Tbh I've now had them printed myself but it's the principle of it now and I really don't want to let it go without either some kind of monetary compensation, or her just sending the bloody photos!

Her name isn't Jade is it?

We had a nightmare with a photographer not giving us the paid for images after I paid for a Father's Day shoot years ago. We managed to resolve it when a friend saw my post on Facebook warning others against using her and telling me she had the same issue until she wrote a letter and posted it through the door of her parents house. She gave us the address so we wrote a letter threatening legal action. I got the photos with a week.

And had the nerve to then ask me to remove my reviews of her online 😂

@Tillow4ever ah no different name but it sounds like a very similar experience! I've seen today that that you can go through a small claim court on gov.co.uk by completing an online application form so if nothing comes from my letter I'm going to try that! At this point I don't even care about the photos anymore, it's the radio silence and ignorance driving me up the wall. I mean three months it really is a joke. Glad you managed to resolve your situation in the end, hoping I'll get a similar outcome!

Definitely leave reviews online anywhere you can. And if they approach you to say they'll give you the prints if you remove the reviews, say if they give you the prints you will update the review to say they've now been received, otherwise you will edit to say you were contacted and told you would only get your prints if you removed the review.

Small claims court certainly seems sensible, but online reviews will at least stop others from having the same issue.