We had a bad (surprisingly so) experience with Elite Photobooth. Two friends had a good experience with them and were happy with their experience with Omar, the owner, so that was good enough for me. He was very pleasant to deal with over email, flexible and professional, although at the end I didn't hear back from him re: the custom logo but didn't think anything of it b/c of the recommendations.
The day of, his technical staff came to set-up the booth, and informed me that they couldn't manage to download the custom logo (that said the name of the event and the date), and offered us the Elite logo (not interested) or something else that the guy said would say "something with the word 'freakin' ' in it" (also not interested). So, we had no custom logo on the photos--needless to say, this diminished their value as a souvenir from this event.
Second, and this also just completely sucked :-), they said nothing to us about ambient lighting (I had specifically asked a question about some of the other special lighting we were using, which Omar said would be no problem), and the first half of the evening, the photos came out disastrously--they all look overexposed and horrible. Three of us brought this to the attention of the attendant--who btw is not an employee of Omar, she is a temp through a staffing company his wife owns or has a relationship with?; this is how he usually staffs things--who said there wasn't anything to do, but then I finally said "maybe we should turn off the lights in this part of the room" and this made a big difference; the photos were then completely dark in the background and the faces, while somewhat dark, at least weren't overexposed. The attendant didn't seem too engaged or to know much; not impressive.
I wrote a note to Omar telling him afterwards how disappointed we were, and he basically wrote me a note back saying that he was very sorry that it had not met my expectations, that as a new business they are constantly working on staffing. I suggested that the issue was not just that it didn't meet my expectations, but that it shouldn't have met *his* expectations--that the lack of logo was really a disappointment, and that his "staff" should be given clear instructions re: how to handle lighting, how to work with clients, etc.--and that really, he should be offering a partial refund. He wrote back saying that he was sorry things hadn't worked out and he would send me a $150 refund (this was out of the $500 fee for the evening).
It was a bad enough experience--but then tonight, we went to another bat mitzvah, at which competing company had a fantastic set-up, lighting designed to work well, a staff member who was enthusiastic and knew exactly how everything worked and how to work with people, tons of great props--a company, btw, that I had corresponded with, but hadn't been impressed via email with how they replied to my inquiry about a Groupon package. It made me feel bad all over again about our choice (especially since we did not have a photographer for the evening; these were our only photographs) and our experience. And then my daughter said, "Our photo booth pictures didn't have our names and the date on it". (I had been hoping she hadn't noticed.)
All in all, this was a terrible experience. Based on my experience up until the party itself, I had been ready to recommend Omar and Elite to all our friends--when I am satisfied with a service or a product, I spread the word (my friend know me as a connector). Now, sadly, I need to spread the word to beware. And, I will be spreading the word re: how impressive the other company was that I saw tonight. (I didn't have the heart to include their name in this review; that seemed too mean.)
Omar seems like a really nice guy, but I don't think he's got control of this business. It's a shame. For us, obviously, this was a one-time experience, and we can't go back and recreate that evening and the decent photos that should serve as a fantastic memory. read more
