A newly-web couple posted their bad experience with their wedding photographer and the overall package provided by the Company.
Based on the LONG post, there are lots of unprofessional lapses, causing extreme distress to the couple, before and after the wedding..
The couple would like to warn and share their experience with everyone..
Below are several communication screenshots posted:
The original LONG post is here:
To Family and Friends who attended the wedding celebration of Wei Hao & I:
We apologise that we will not be able to share a majority of the table photos which were taken during the wedding banquet, as a result of the failure of the photography company we engaged, French Toast Productions. It is very disappointing that you will not have photos as keepsake of our wedding, especially to those who had travelled far and wide just to be with us on our wedding day.
Here, we would like to share our negative experiences about French Toast Production, and warn other couples to be wary if you are considering their services.
To start, we must acknowledge that there are successfully delivered photographs that were decent, but even these could not make up for the team’s repeated mistakes and poor attitude towards us.
We engaged photographer and videographer Shawn Yip Chee Keong and Jonathan Han after chancing upon their firm’s Instagram page – @frenchttoast.
We first engaged their services in late 2017 for actual day photography and videography, and an overseas photoshoot in Hokkaido, which came as a promotional package that was offered to us along with a golden hour local photo and video shoot.
After discussion about terms of agreement – where both parties were agreeable on price and deliverables – we signed the contract in late 2017.
We went for our golden hour shoots in the first half of 2018 at Coney Island, and during the shoot everything went smoothly, and we decided to engage the team for our ROM photo and video shoots too (this was to happen in October 2018).
Strike #1
Then, leading up to the Hokkaido trip (which happened in July 2018), when Shawn was due to purchase air flight tickets (which he had contractually agreed to purchase on his own accord as the price we had committed included his and our make-up artist’s flights and accommodation), he suddenly told us that he had misquoted us; he basically panicked after checking flight prices. This came to light to us, that he had not done sufficient market research before quoting and committing the prices to his clients. On top of that, he accused us of not informing him of the location we were flying to, which we had mentioned several times — during meet-ups, over tele-conversations, on WhatsApp and even a detailed plan was done and sent to him via e-mail about our suggested shoot locations.
After a string of accusatory WhatsApp messages from him — where he had communicated rudely, and insinuated that we were to blame for his mistake — he wanted to withdraw from the contract. Shortly after, he then acknowledged that it was his fault and that he would like to proceed as planned.
Wei Hao and I, in view of the situation and in wanting to maintain a working relationship as we had already engaged French Toast Productions services, offered out of goodwill, to cover their (Shawn and make-up artist) hotel accommodation costs for this trip, which they accepted. The trip went smoothly as planned.
Strike #2
Then, when it was time for delivery of the overseas shoot pictures in hard copy (which in contractual agreement was 50 pieces to be delivered in a wooden memento box), he suddenly told us that he would reduce the number to 30, without informing us beforehand. Again, he assumed he had mentioned to us about the change, which he did not. Only after further questioning, did he decide to abide by the contractual agreement of 50 pieces.
Strike #3
Then, in early October 2018, a long WhatsApp message was sent to us by Jonathan (videographer at French Toast Production), informing us that video footages of our local shoot at Coney Island had all disappeared.
We were so disappointed. Jonathan was sincere in trying to rectify the failure and as compensation, offered a refund of the overseas hotel accommodation cost, and agreed to shoot our ROM video in replacement of the lost footages.
We let the matter rest after we came to a mutual agreement; it was also too late to look for a replacement photographer and videographer as our wedding banquet was just two months away.
The team promised that similar mistakes will not happen again, in view that our wedding banquet was nearing. They assured us that they “will spare no cost” to ensure that they deliver without failure.
Unfortunately, this was NOT the case.
And that led to, Strike #4
On 19 Jan 2019, 6 weeks after our wedding banquet (the contractually agreed date of photo and video delivery), we received our photos and videos via a Google drive link sent to our emails. Along with it was a message informing us that some of our photos were corrupted and cannot be delivered.
We found out after going through the set of photographs that we were missing a significant bulk of the table shots we had taken with all our guests (more than 80% of the table photo shots were missing!).
What followed was even more ridiculous, with Shawn denying that this mistake was a failure on his part, repeatedly mentioning that it was a virus that had attacked the files.
We were appalled by Shawn’s bad service recovery and rude replies. We even tried many ways to ask if he would seek professional help to assist with retrieving the lost photographs, but he had seemed to stop trying.
Despite our repeated asking for further possible solutions, we were flatly told that nothing could be done to recover the images and that the software he had used didn’t work. This just left us with more frustration and exasperation, especially since Shawn’s service attitude has been very unsatisfactory, with many of his replies very curt and insincere.
As a result, a good part of photographs with all our guests, are missing and irrecoverable (according to Shawn from French Toast Production).
Even when we suggested to engage an external company in attempt to recover the photographs, he was unwilling to try and said that our suggestion was unreliable and continued to harp on the point that nothing could be done, claiming that he had already exhausted all options — how is it exhausting all options if he doesn’t wish to try another alternative? Neither did he offer any other recovery company options after shooting our suggestion down, and rather easily conclude time after time that nothing else could be done.
French Toast Production’s failure to deliver on this once-in-a-lifetime event has left us at a loss as photo memories of our wedding day, which were supposed to be captured, have not been delivered in entirety, and this event can never be recreated.
The least we would expect is a fair compensation after all these mistakes French Toast Production had made. But instead, we got an offer for a baby photo shoot, which:
1) is a gross assumption of what married life is.
2) means we have to wait for however long we decide to have a baby, before we can get a compensation?
Also, why would we continue to entrust another milestone photo/video shoot with this company again after they have failed us so many times? It just wouldn’t make sense, would it?
What made it worse was Shawn’s continuous defensive replies; they were often curt, and many times he insinuated that we were being difficult. We tried hard to stay calm and rational throughout our conversation, but if your wedding photographer only notified you of this failure on the date of delivery (and wouldn’t even admit it was a failure on his part), would you be?
I believe there are clients of French Toast Productions who have suffered the same plight, as Shawn did mention that there were footages of other clients, which were lost too.
I hope that with us sharing this experience, no one else would have to go through the trauma of losing pre-wedding and wedding footages like we did.
As this is a very LONG story, we are unable to upload all the screenshots posted by the person.
You may view his original post at his personal Facebook, if it’s still available.
