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Original poster

HAs anybody had a session with Venture photography?

173 replies

IlanaK · 01/01/2005 09:59

We won a prize draw for a session with them. It is tomorow and I am wondering if anyone else has done one.

Our voucher is for the session and for one photo (total cost supposedly £125). But I have my doubts now as to how legitimate the prize draw was as I saw them advertising these vouchers to give people at christmas for only £25. When I filled out the prize draw form I mentioned that we were interessed in a photo of the kids for a large space on our wall and I suspect they gave us the voucher as we were a good bet to buy something.

Anyway, has anyone experienced this company? Are we in for a hard sell tomorow? And how expensive are their photos to buy? I am guessing very expensive!

Thanks!

OP posts:
WigWamBam · 04/01/2005 12:04

They told us 6 weeks at the very most. It took five months.

stressedmummy · 04/01/2005 12:04

Ohps, have given away my identidy.

lockets · 04/01/2005 12:06

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

blueteddy · 04/01/2005 12:06

That sounds about right wwb.

WideWebWitch · 04/01/2005 12:06

Sm, they're all digital so someone must have pressed delete surely?

blueteddy · 04/01/2005 12:08

Probably did it out of spite!

stressedmummy · 04/01/2005 12:24

Fat chance of them repaying anything Lockets!
They don't go out of there way to please the customers atall.
They think that they r so good that they don't need to

sanchpanch · 04/01/2005 12:25

we went to Venture on xmas eve, with a voucher my mum bidded for in a samaritans auction, the voucher was worth £200.00, we had brill time at the session, had family photos taken and some of just the girls,
we went back on xmas eve, the photos are projected on the wall in front of you whilst music plays in the background,(lighthouse family) i was sobbing whilst watching these photos of my beautiful girls, the photos were stunning and we ending up buying a collection of 15 photos, in an album as we couldnt chose our favourites,(these phots are not framed, (£700.00)
There is no way we can afford these but i couldnt bear to let them go,
They do keep them for 3 years,
We did all enjoy it, but the prices are extreame, i feel if they priced them cheaper they would get a lot more interest,

blueteddy · 04/01/2005 12:29

Well I had mine done in May & they have already got rid of them!

leglepartridge · 04/01/2005 12:33

IVe got a venture portrait and don't have any real complaints. Its really lovely and good quality. I didn't have a hard sell on me, but do think the prices are silly. You could do just as well probably by getting a local photographer. I would use them again though as I do like the style of the pictures and the frames etc.

blueteddy · 04/01/2005 13:04

Maybe it is just the Canterbury branch that are so poor that it is almost a joke then!
I can see them going out of business b4 long.

WigWamBam · 04/01/2005 13:53

No, the Lichfield branch is crap too.

lowcalCOD · 05/01/2005 12:13

bournemouth crap too

blueteddy · 05/01/2005 15:55

I did not have a problem (unlike my friends) with my picture itself, other than the expense!
It is the appauling customer service that I have recieved throughout & the fact that the staff don't seem to have a clue what they are doing.

blueteddy · 05/01/2005 15:56

Other than to take your money!

Original poster
IlanaK · 15/01/2005 12:55

Update on this. We went to our viewing today. The pictures were good, but not stunning. The "perfect" shot we had wanted of the 2 children was just not there. The photographer had said it was difficult as there are quite different in age and the baby obviously couldn't do much. However, there was a great one of each of them individually. We decided to have one of those as our free one and are paying £80 for the other one. There was NO pressure selling at all. The lady ran through the photos with us, ran through our options. We told her it was all too expensive for us, and that was that. We took both our kids with us and she didn't blink at eye at that. In fact, they had toys in the viewing room so we are obviously not the only ones to do this. They have said 6 weeks now for the photos to come, and we do have to pick them up which is annoying. However, they are going to touch up one of the photos to get rid of a prominant mark on the baby's arm from the TB jab. All in all, for the money we paid (nothing ), I am happy I did not feel pressured into buying the extra shot, but really wanted on eof the two of them. She did offer for us to re-shoot by the way as we could not find one perfect shot of the boys together. But I did not want to do that.

OP posts:
Bigfatmomma · 15/01/2005 13:56

IlanaK, I'm glad you've had a good experience. We too found them ok. I bought a voucher for DH for last Father's Day as he's the photographer in our household, meaning there aren't many nice pics of him and DS. Of course, no price list with voucher...

On session day, DS (2yrs) decided to go to sleep not long before we had to leave (much later than he would normally nap). When we arrived he had to be woken up and was stroppy and unco-operative. In the end the photographer said she was wasting our time and to re-arrange the session - no extra charge!

Next session was great and there were some cool pics. But we were shocked by the prices when we went for our viewing and felt that the friendliness level went down sharply when it became clear that we would not be spending big money.

However, we ended up with a lovely, unusual pic of the 3 of us (of a size which fits nicely into DH's scanner ) and I also bought another small pic before Xmas as a present for my father (no charge for viewing again).

The photographers (we had 2 diff ones) were very good, the photos were lovely, the presentation was classy - but the prices are through the roof.

Have to say we experienced no hard-sell at any time - just a couple of calls chasing us to arrange the session.

lowcalCOD · 15/01/2005 14:05

did they play music as you viewd?

RTKangaMummy · 15/01/2005 14:38

please could someone put a link to their website because I am intriged by them and their prices and why they can charge so much

btw I do understand that the are artistic

blueteddy · 15/01/2005 14:39

They played classical music for us cod!

sanchpanch · 15/01/2005 14:40

we had lighthouse family played to us!!!!
website is www.thisisventure.co.uk, sorry dont know how to do as a link

lowcalCOD · 15/01/2005 14:42

its "this is venture".co

we had teen sprit, played by a 60 yearold owman it lost it mood really

JanH · 15/01/2005 14:49

link for you, Kanga.

blueteddy · 15/01/2005 14:50

They have finally agreed to let us have another session free of charge, after a lot of complaining about them losing our pictures on top of all our other disasters!
We are going on Thursday.
I really did not want to step foot in the place again, but dont want to give them the satisfaction of getting away with giving me my free picture. Especially as I have a feeling they got rid of our pics because I dared to complain to head office about them!

RTKangaMummy · 15/01/2005 15:33

Thanks guys for the links

The website looks different to your experiences

IMHO

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