Excel School Photographers

Epic Fail. We made a special trip to Natomas for re-​takes. Excel failed to send the re-​take photo to the school. This was back in November of 2015. Excel had more than ample time to forward the photo. Excel also tried to blame the school.
Next year, my child will not be allowed to be photographed by Excel.
It is time for companies to step up and take responsibiliy for their mistakes.
Epic Fail, Excel!

The short review:
Worse customer service that I have ever delt with online. Even worse than Comcast. (Now thats impressive!). Emailing back and forth for months since June 8^th. This company knows how to take your money and not give a single crap if you get anything back for it. After dragging this on for over 3 months. I still either need my photos that I was promised or my money back, including the additional $ 6 they had me pay for Shipping and Handling.
The quality of the photos are just awful as it is. So I paid even more than I should have with my patience, time, happiness, and for basically turning me into a nagging girlfriend! Just rediculous!
The long, overly detailed review:
Dear Sue, Shayna, and everyone at Excel,
I have been dealing with back and forth emails from you since June 8^th. I work in customer service. So my first impulse is try to have as much patience as possible. But I’m all tapped out of patience now that it’s been three months later.
The problem started when I filled out the order form for the pictures. When I got to the part that ask what background you would like. I always want the default background and nothing crazy. So I left it blank. For whatever reason, one of the teachers aids at my son’s school decided to pick the San Francisco Golden Gate background without informing me. Usually I’m so excited to see my son’s photos. Then I can divide them up and give to family members. But my heart dropped and filled with disappointment when I saw I paid $ 40 for a background I not only hate, but didn’t pick or want.
The first email I sent was the beginning June 4^th. I finally got a reply on June 8^th from Sue Towns saying «You can definitely send your photos back and switch the backgrounds!». She then referred me to Shayna Hannaman. I thought «Great. This will be easier than ordering a whole new set of photos then!» Which I was completely about to do… but, I was WRONG. This company is great at taking money. But horrible at showing anything for it. I heard NOTHING back for weeks. I finally sent another e-​mail on June 29^th saying «still waiting on a reply»…essentially there are 10 emails back and fourth all the way until August 6^th. Completely Bullsh! ting me with lies «Good Afternoon, it will be on its way tomorrow. I do apologize for the length it has taken to get these photos out because we are doing some maintenance on our printers.». It is now August 26^th, they have not sent ANYthing.
Shayna and everyone at Excel Photography, I’m sorry I can’t handle your blantant lies anymore. I realize now that it’s not your fault. It’s my fault for giving you my business. We both knew it was over a long time ago. I accept this now. Consider us broken up. No, we cannot be friends.
Sincerely,
Nagging Ex Customer.

I greatly appreciate the above average customer service and assistance I received from Excel. Unfortunately, my financial situation has been strained due to a family emergency — I really wanted to purchase Spring pictures since I never purchased their fall ones. I didn’t have payment on actual picture day. The photographer went ahead and took my children’s pictures and instructed me to call Excel, which I did and in turn opened up a case number for me and three days later after I mailed in a money order I received a courtesy call informing me my payment was received and was given my order number to keep for my records. My pictures look great and I am very happy with their commitment to help parents outs in need. Thank you very much Excel.

To have to choose a background and pay for our orders without seeing proofs first seem quite unprofessional. Lifetouch always sent us proofs to check out the pictures prior to ordering.
I placed my order online cause the flyers sent home advertised about how easy and convenient it is online. The online ordering process was confusing and it was hard to find all the packages. We have two kids to order for so we had to got through the same confusing process twice and it was very time consuming.
I received my CD of the portraits in the mail and they weren’t even the same background I ordered. When I called the company about it they want me to ship it back to them and then they would reimburse us for shipping. I’m almost thinking about keeping the CDs cause it’s such a hassle. What’s the point of picking the background ahead of time when they are just going to put what they want on there anyways? The picture quality is not as good as lifetouch either. Hopefully the new school the kids are going to next year won’t have Excel to do their school pictures.

This company sent photos of my children to someone without my permission. I find this very disturbing. They should not send pictures to anyone without parent or guardian permission. When I called them they were totally unapologetic.

WOW! Nate provided excellent customer service at my school’s photo shoot on Thursday. He took extra time to make sure each of my students were smiling and looked amazing in the class photo. In addition, he was patient with my students that have special needs. Thank you for hiring an amazing photographer.

First and foremost i have to say thank you to the photographer who took our sons picture on picture day. Our child has a real awkward smile and in those rare occasional his true smile appears. We got the pictures back from school the other day and we couldn’t be happier with the way the pictures turned out. My wife immediately picked up the phone and spoke a wonderful lady named Erika. Her knowledge and professionalism was above and beyond anything we could have expected. While placing the additional order with her she told us that we can now view our child’s pictures online with the secure password that was sent home in the package. Erika further explained that it was a new service that they are offering for those family’s who would like to view the pictures before buying. We thought this was a wonderful idea and this week we plan on sending the secure code to our family back east so they are able to see our sons school photos for this year. Thank you again Excel for the wonderful pictures you’ve captured of our family.

Always a good experience. Customer service is VERY good. An actual human being answers their phone!!! Not sure why anyone had a problem with bad photos, as most schools schedule a retake day, and yes, this company also schedules time at their studio for parents to bring their kid if they want. Prices are less expensive than the competition and the photographers seem friendly at the school. It’s nice when you see the same people coming back. Picture companies change a lot of things every year, and last spring pictures were viewed online beforehand, which was nice.

I’m surprised at the reviews for this place. I’ve always been happy with the fact they have remained so affordable compared to life touch at my child’s last school. My daughter forgot it was picture day and took horrible pictures I called the studio and they were more than happy to accommodate me on a Saturday to retake the picture, the photographer even let me pick from the shots on her camera. As far as the ordering process, it’s not any different from any other school photographer. it’s not cost effective to print out proofs and remain affordable I get it, but the online proofs sounds like a good suggestion. If you don’t like your pictures call the studio and go retake there. I had a great experience and would definitely use them again.

The way that they have set up this picture process is not only annoying, but unethical. By telling us that we have to choose to buy our pictures on or before picture day is basically trapping us into buying pictures from them that we may not even like. I have not purchased pictures from this company ever since they stopped allowing us to actually SEE the proofs before-​hand. Why would anybody, in this economy especially, want to take that risk? They should at least allow us to see them online before we decide to purchase them. I am not only speaking for myself, but for many other parents that have said the same thing! Too bad for us, and shame on this business. Oh yeah and their pictures suck too.
They must hear this a lot! because there is no way to even send them an e-​mail and online it stops me from sending my thoughts, because they say my phrase is recognized as SPAM. What?

The principal strongarmed Marty into coming back and doing a retake. It was far better. They still get one star for being a nightmare.