Complaint Review: ExploreTalent - Photo 22

My name is Steve and I registered with ExploreTalent.com in September of 05. They had been wanting me to work with them since January of this year and I signed up for a one month subscription of their services, with the promise that I was going to recieve a photoshoot. I was called by Melinda, a representative from Photo 22, who is the company they work with for photoshoots. She scheduled me at noon on Saturday the 8th of October.

I work retail, and as a result, I had to jump through alot of hoops to get that day off. I get a call from Photo22 two days before the shoot letting me know that it had been cancelled because not enough people signed up for it.

I was extremely upset at how unprofessional this was. Not only am I not having a photoshoot at this point, I'm losing money because I'm not working on a big selling weekend. The 30 days I signed up for was a waste of money because I didn't have any professional shots online and I was promised this wasn't going to be a problem. The manager of Photo 22 was extremely rude to me when I explained the situation and said there was nothing they could do.

I sent several emails to the customer service department of ExploreTalent explaining how unprofessional it was that they would promise and set up appointments and then cancel at the last minute after clients had already made arrangements to honor the appointments. I was very upset by this and wanted to know what could be done about the situation.

I never recieved a reply. I called them on October 25th to cancel my services with them and finally explained to someone working there that the money I had already paid was useless, and my experience with the company was extremely unsatisfactory. They could not refund me this months payment in full, but they refunded 20 of the 30 I had paid. Fortunately I got out after only $40, but it could have cost me alot more.

I thought I got shafted, I learned that one girl had flown down from San Fransisco that day for the shoot and they cancelled on her too.

Steve
Ramona, California
U.S.A.