Artona - never again. Money jackers no offence intended.

hi i would just like to say the terrible customer service my friends received from Artona Group 353 W. 7th Ave. Vancouver, BC.

She placed an order online and called the place several dozen times with no one picking up the phone ever. SHe emailed two times and i got no reply for at least three four days while my friend on the other hand got a reply the next day. Shocking!! However, a day later, she did get a reply and they told her she could not cancel or alter the order in any way. Therefore she sent them a reply complaining and discussing what happened and that if they are not willing to let me "alter" my order she want a full refund, Since she couldn't contact them and discuss my situation, she decided to personally visit them.

Today, when me and my friend visited them, everything was going smoothly until the lady that replied one of my emails came and told me that it could not be done. WHAT THE HECK? she told me a lot of BS about her accountant trying to sound so cheerful with an oh i want to solve this minor problem attitude and told me to wait for her accountant's phone call the next day...or wait until 6pm that evening. The moment she said that, it was obvious she wasn't getting her money back...and guess what.....we wasted my evening waiting for her accountant and you know what....she said my friend would have to pay a whopping $50 cancelation fee!!!

WHAT KIND OF CUSTOMER SERVICE IS THIS? YOU TELL ME. already i had to pay $9 to pick up my pictures FROM ARTONA and now i have to pay FIFTY DOLLARS for them to cancel my order? Well, you won't be seeing me purchasing anything from artona without CAREFUL CONSIDERATION.

And let me tell you it's not worth it at all. Have you heard of London Drugs or SUperstore or ANY PLACE that prints photos? get it enhanced bigger or smaller FOR LESS rather than be stupid like me and pay them $40 for something that can be done for a dime. No offence, but i highly recommend it.

Also, my other friend wasn't able to use for $60 deposit and now she doesn't even know if she is getting her money back because her coupon code did not work and now she just lost 60 dollars ....once again...poor customer service. She phoned and emailed them too.

All in all, im not satisfied with ARTONA GROUP the least bit. i hope you all carefully order your pics dont be like me... i was surprised no one knew what to do with a refund, has it never been mentioned in a retail environment? seriously...reality check..

by the way, artona staff, if you are reading this....i hope you learn something about your TERRIBLE WORK ETHICS, COMPANY POLICIES, AND CUSTOMER SERVICE.

I already tried asking London drugs to enlarge it to 16x20, they can't & won't do it. Artona has copyright over the pictures for 5 years. Until that 5 years is over, London Drugs or any other big company will not be able to touch it. They can get fined $20,000.
In the end, I ordered $430 from Artona.

Eeek, I know Artona is expensive but not many other studios will do the whole go cards, grad photos for our school.

The company that we're with right now can't provide grad/yearbook things...=/
Artona is too smart to give secondary schools deals...=/

Doesn't Artona have a monopoly on Vancouver schools? That's what I heard from the London Drugs representative.

Yeah, practically...

They have a contract with the VSB and Burnaby Schools...and Surrey. and Richmond.
But for the Independent Schools, (not religious ones) they do not because it is independent...
But, darn are they good, they offered my school free yearbook stuff, and graduation photos, so we'll switch to them.

we have to order individual pics in order to get group ones right?

for my school we take our grad pics at custudio because the photographer there graduated from my schoool ( david thompson )

^ their session portfolios are pretty nice.. some of the back grounds are a little weird tho. my friend looks like she's in a haunted house LOL

haha i know what you mean some of the backgrounds are odd but some i do like more than artona.. like theres this tin background... ( which looks like a garage door) BUT when the guys take pictures with it i think it looks pretty nice but when girls do its sort of.. odd..

^ yea i saw that one. love it!

Edit: Their pricing is also a lot better

the only thing about custudio though is that its alot smaller than artona. so it sort of hard to take group pictures there

^ yeah and the rooms are pretty small and they got like all the props in there. but like the photographer is pretty cool and he like makes sure ur hair is all nice like no random split in the midddle ! and he makes u feel comfortable and even though your only suppose to get like 40 mins or something some of my friends got like an hour or more ! so nice!

I didn't have any of these problems when buying photos from Artona... my mom wanted pictures of my gr11 photos last year but I didn't order them through my school in the beginning cuz she didn't want photos if they turned out bad. in the end she liked them so we went and ordered some. Everything went smoothly.

although gotta agree that artona is really pricey.

I hate Artona, they have newb photographers at ridiculous prices. For anyone getting their grad photos done, don't get it done at Artona. Go there to get your composite for the yearbook and that's it, they shouldn't charge you the deposit... unless they change the rules.

There are way better photographers out there and they actually care about your happiness.

Hm.. my good friend works here and he recently told me that they just switched over to an online system and it messed up really badly. He told me yesterday before I read this so no bias. Apparently they lost tons of revenue because everyone's order got messed up.

I agree with you too delester.

What a horrible experience!!! +_+

someone told me they used to work there and it is all overpriced and such a rip off. he said that none of the photographers and trained photographers/know what they are doing. he recommended that me and my friends get my pictures done at somewhere like walmart where people actually know what they're doing for a LOT cheaper. the only thing that's so great about artona are the backgrounds in the rooms and high capacity for many people making it easy to do highschools and go cards etc.