I have just been ripped off.

In August 2008, I went to Ventures Photographers in greenwich london with my family to take pictures based on thier £25 studio offer. After the photo shot I was compelled to buy a £675 set of photographs. they used unimaginable sales schemes, infact forgot about the £25 offer. I agreed and paid but called up 24 hours later over the weekend. But vehemently refused after several haggling, they agreed to allow me take a £375 set.

Now its 3 months later, i have paid £375, made several calls, left messages, no one has contacted me.

Called thier help line, they could offer me no help and still refered me back to the greenwich studio.

At this point I am fed up and would like to get my money back since they do not want to give me the photographs I paid for..

What do I do? Can I get help?

Well - it all boils down to how you paid. The fact there was a vanishing special offer, or price-elastic photo-shoot, your complaint will be that you paid for a service that was not supplied.

If you paid by Visa Debit or a credit card, lucky old you - you can simply tell the CC that you've never received the goods as promised and are looking to them for your money back. If you paid by a non-Visa debit, cheque or cash, your only recourse is to send a letter before action and pursue them for a refund after giving them - say, 28 days - to supply your order.

Venture - which is a Kodak franchise, operates in much the same way as a number of other portrait photography setups - they make their money through sales of prints and framing/mounting. Unlike some of the others, Venture's quality is usually pretty good, especially if you like the contemporary style - hi-key manipulated images.

Their whole operation is aimed at persuading customers to pay a lot for images; the 'free' studio session, the comfortably furnished viewing room with huge plasma screen, and so on. They use US-style selling techniques, but ultimately it's for the customer to decide whether or not to buy - and to shop around and/or get quotes before committing.

However, in this case, where Venture seem to have failed to supply goods that have been paid for, there's another option in addition to the ones described above - Trading Standards. Whilst they are generally hopeless with DCAs, most are very good at dealing with this sort of situation; they may even be aware of the Olan Mills fiasco of 2006.

was very unimpressed with venture...

tho to say i still have the £25 photo on my desk, reframed as the origional frame was very poor quality

they did lie to me on multiple occasions

saying that the offer (stand) was only on this weekend, over a year later its still there.

been that long i cant remember what the other lies were but there were at least 2 more...

the photos were well done but in many cases were spoilt by the editing, and the frame, dvd or album were massivly over priced with the cheapest being over £300.

we had a massive problem with venture. my wife was bought one of the £125 vouchers (actual cost £25) plus £75 extra vouchers by colleaugues at work for her birthday.

we have used venture before so knew how dear they were and we had sworn never to use them again, however when the vouchers were bought for us we had to.

we went for the sitting and then went back the week later to view. we had every intention of just having a 10 x 8 framed photo at a cost of £155. we knew from the £125 voucher that £50 had gone towards the sitting so it left us £75 from that and the extra £75 we had. in effect putting £5 cash towards the 10 x 8 would be all.

venture said we couldnt do this as the £75 from the promotional voucher could only be used on a wall display and not a desk display. the cheapest wall display was £300 which we didnt want to pay. we ended up having to forget about the £75 from the promotional voucher and use the £75 extra voucher to put towards a 8 x 6 photo and an extra £20 cash.

when we left i read through the small print and discovered it did not say this anywhere so i rang head office and got through to the customer relations executive, chris woods. i explained and when he got back to me after a few days he agreed there had been a mistake and it would be corrected. we had several problems getting the 10 x 8 photo from the store as they though they were right still.

ater a few weeks of endless phone calls and getting owhere even though the exec at head office had agreed with us, i threatened them with trading standards and the manchester evening news paper.

they promised to post the pic to us that day, but never did. i gave them a week to sort it and it still didnt arrive. i then phoned the store and then chris woods minutes later telling them that i did not want the photo any more and i wanted a full refund of the total £100 my wifes work had paid for the vouchers so we could go elsewhere for our photos. again threatening them that if the money was not behind my dor by 5pm that day i would continue with contacting the media.

that day a cheque did arive for £100 but when banked it had been cancelled!

one last try and told them if the cash wasnt behind my door when i got home that was it. when i got home the pic was there with a free one also for the inconvenience, this had been posted with royal mail. later on a manager from the store turned up at my door and handed me an envelope containing £100 but ran off down the road into a taxi before i could even say anything.

so all in all not a bad deal in the end - 2 photos, the 10 x 8 we wanted, a free 8 x 6 and full refund - really could have done without te headaches though!!!!

chris woods head office customer relations executive - 01606 558854 if you to want a headache!!!

Completely agree!! this will make you laugh though, maybe

went for a sitting in April 2007 went back a review to be told it would be £1000 plus for a 10 photo album we said we would think about. a few weeks later we had a finance agreement come through so my husband told them where to go. roll on to 2009 for a courier to turn up with said photos. stunned i took them in. my husband came home and immediately called them to complain quite aggresively and was told the agreement would be cancelled. we still have the photos and no money paid out bargain !! one in the eye for the greedy photographers

yorklass, their faces must have been a picture!

well done.

Yorklass2009 - I assume that was the York branch you were talking about? We were approached in Morrisons; I always walk straight past anyone trying to approach me in supermarkets but my girlfriend was interested so I left her to it. The overly camp chap selling it gave the impression that she could have the digital images in exchange for the voucher for reproduction on a website and although this turned out to be a lie, they have honoured it. The pre-session period was annoying as they kept wanting to rope in all the family and make it 'fun', but we wanted photos, not fun.

We'd done a bit of research beforehand and knew they were a very expensive company, so we went to the viewing fully prepared to turn them down. As the viewing started some of the shots were pretty rubbish, but as it went on they got better and I have to say that some of the shots are £1000's worth and it didn't take hard sell to make us seriously consider spending some money (even though some of their packages represent a full years wages for us) - the quality of the product did that for us. The advantage of a company that makes such large margins is that you have masses of bargaining power.

Venture also use images as part of their advertising and although they own the copyright, they still need your permission to use the images, so if they ask you that gives you even more buying power. We ended up buying a set of display images but we also got the cost of the voucher refunded, the voucher print, a digital album and copyright license for free. If they had been poor images, they wouldn't have got anything and without the extras we'd have happily walked away with a cheap print in a naff frame and they'd have been out of pocket.

Be prepared, know their prices and give them the hardsell - if you want basic, cheap photos, you won't get them from Venture but for some stunning shots give them the hard sell and they will sell to you, because that's how they make money. They'll loose money on £25 for at least two hours (despite the sessions for viewing and studio being booked for an hour we have been at least three) so they have to sell you something to make money.

I was approaced a few weeks before Christmas by a woman selling venture gift vouchers, i had been thinking about having a family picture took of myself and my 4 kids and i mentioned that my mum wanted a photo of all her 10 grandchildren, so she perked up with "well we are offering 2 vouchers for £35, each voucher entitles you to an hour photo session and a one free print" i thought this was a great deal and bought right away. From boxing day till new years day we had one of my husbands children staying with us, we only see a few times a year as they live far away so we thought it would be nice to have a picture of all 5 kids. i rang venture to arrange a session naming all 5 kids. Unfortunately my youngest boy and myself came down with a nast flu and we had to cancel. My mum, my sisters, my brother, my self and 10 kids went to a different studio last week (i don't live near my family) it was a lovely day and went well. Then i came home and rearranged my own session for this coming sunday. Today the photographer called me just to "introduce herself" she asked if she could confirm the names of my 5 kids at which point i informed her that one of the kids was not mine and he would not be attending..the responce i got has shocked and insulted me! She told me that my husband and his kids MUST attend to validate the voucher, it is a FULL FAMILY voucher. I told her that his kids live far away and we don't see them, i told her that he is not the father to my kids so i just want myself and MY children, they said this is not possible! We have a complicated family, having seperate children and this is a very common situation in 2011! how can i be turned away for having a different kind of family..are they allowed to do this? I paid for a voucher and at the time told the woman that it was myself and my kids..she never told me that i had to take my whole family! Also yes their prices are astronomical for £95 you get a 7x5 print they go all the way up to £3500...If you want 10 images on a memory stick you have to fork out £600