I work for an event marketing company, and we needed a photo booth for one of our big clients for their setup at a fitness expo in San Diego. I found Jerry's Photo Booth online. After looking through his website, seeing his photo examples, prices, and reading his 5-star Yelp reviews, I decided to contact him. He responded quickly, answered my questions and accommodated my request for specific fitness props. I mentioned that the client would prefer us to use our own photo strip template, and he said that was no problem. I proceeded with a deposit and booked him for 5 hours.
I emailed Jerry the photo strip template that the client wanted to use and did not hear back from him. A week before the event, I still had not heard from him, so I reached out via email to make sure we were all set (with location, details, props, photo strip template) and received no response. I called him and left a voice message, and he called back shortly after. I told him who I was and that I was calling to make sure we were all set for the event. He said he'd have to go back and look at the contract to make sure. He said everything was probably good to go, but he would follow up via email to confirm. I didn't receive anything from him, so I emailed him again. He emailed back finally and said we were still confirmed, and everything was all set. We exchanged last minute details, and he said he would be arriving to the event 1 hour early to set up so that he could start promptly at the expo start time.
The day of the event, our event manager received a call from Jerry 15 minutes before the event was to start, and he said he couldn't find the location. He showed up on-site 15 minutes after the show started (and 1 hour and 15 minutes after he said he would be there). He was finally all set up and running approximately 30 minutes after the show started. Because he was late, our event manager had to stop her own tasks so she could assist Jerry with his set up (which should have been taken care of before the show started). I texted back and forth with him, discussing some of the appropriate props (it was a fitness expo, so we didn't want sombreros), and I made a tweak to the photo strip template since his printed copies were cropping in a weird way, which he accommodated. I asked him if he could stay a little later, since he was late, and he said he would. Finally, everything seemed to be running smoothly.
I checked in with our event manager towards the end of the day, and she said that there was a malfunction with the flash, and some of the photo strips were dark. She also mentioned that Jerry seemed unengaged and was looking down at his phone for most of the event. She said he stayed about 10 minutes after his scheduled time and then left, citing he had to go to another event.
I never heard from Jerry again after the event. No follow up. No "scrapbook" that was supposed to be included in the 5-hour package that we paid for. I ended up going on his website to find our event photos. For the most part, they looked really good, and the quality of the camera was clear. But several photos were dark, as our event manager had mentioned.
I am giving him two stars because for the most part, the client and the attendees were happy with the photo strips. But if I had booked him for a once-in-a-lifetime event, such as a wedding, I would have been extremely disappointed: showing up very late, several dark photo strips, unreliable communication. I would not book him again. It's a shame because we run a lot of events in the San Diego area and would have reached out to him for future work. read more