Professional Photographers Say PixiFoto has no place in the market

You may think that after years of complaints PixiFoto raised their standards or anything. They didn't, read the lucid analysis of a professional photographer (a true photographer not the trainees at PixiFoto) about why it's over the PixiFoto era.

I spent 3 years with Pixi Foto and I am in no way a fan. I saw their demise coming a mile away. Their problems were operational and their business model failed them. I have 13 years experience in the photography industry, and although there were staff that didn’t have experience,[...]

Horrible PixiFoto Portraits could make you win in tribunal

Knowing how much PixiFoto sucks it's not a surprise that a woman in Melbourne, Australia took legal action against them! You can read the full story on the Herald Sun website.

Excellent article, really, that perfectly recaps what i said in my previous articles:

• poor quality
• unprofessional service
• no customer care, actually most often customers feel bullied
• bloody expensive (for the quality)

I take better shots myself

And once again we hear a customer saying she can take better photos with her camera! Let me quote the article directly:
Meanwhile, she's bought herself a digital camera: "The photos I take are much better than theirs".

So, as you should know by now, my advise is simple. Buy a camera (or borrow it from a friend), use your mobile, hire a true professional! You WILL get better results!

All that glisters is not gold

PixiFoto deception explained

Just because you'll find PixiFoto studios inside reputable stores (like Mothercare) it doesn't mean they should be blindly trusted. Although this is a perfectly reasonable thing to do i'm of the opinion that honorable businesses like Mothercare and others should begin to be concerned whether the notorious poor quality, lack of customare care of Pixifoto are damaging their brands.

Unknown price list

I went into mothercare and asked about prices, but they couldn't give me a price range because it depends on what we choose, but we wanted to know roughly how much people paid for theirs. I thought they would have done packages [...]
source: babyandbump.momtastic.com

i absolutely agree about pixie photo! when i got photos done a few years ago they wee very cagey about telling you the price!
source: www.whoseview.ie

Bullying customers

glad they went bankrupt! ive used them a few times over the years and can honestly say the qualitty deteriorated over time. the pricing is absolute ridiculous and our made to feel lke crap if you dont wnat to buy a big package
source: www.womo.com.au

Would do better myself

Id have to agree with dyoga they did the same with the dark back round and my Son even though his has drown hair it was so dark that he blended into the back round and this was my second shoot cause in the first my daughters had and foot were cut off. Thay are not professionals at all !! I dont know how there getten away with it !! People must be blind Ive taken better myself.
source: www.rollercoaster.ie

PixiFoto - A regrettable choice

Aggressive sales, Poor customer care, Felt like we were on a production line

i'll keep this factual and to the point. On booking the shoot I told the girl we didn't want posed family shots and prefer natural looking pictures of us interacting with our baby. this was not taken into account and we were told where to sit/stand smile. we didn't get a say in what the photos looked like and whether we wanted to try something different. she kept saying 'whatever you want we can do' but when i said i like the natural looking picture you have on your display, she clearly didn't have the skill or experience to take a similar shot.

We felt constantly rushed and the furthest from relaxed you could possibly be. When returning 15 minutes later, again we were completely rushed into making decisions on the spot as to which photos we'd take, with a queue of people waiting the sales girl was getting more and more anxious as we went through them and we needed her to explain all the different prices and size combinations but she clearly didn't want to. She kept repeating the sales pattern of 'if you pay £450 you can have all the prints and the disc to print off your own, rather than help us make the right decisions on the shots we wanted. it was awful and my partner was furious with the fact that when we asked for some time to think and discuss what we wanted, we were met with the ultimate in aggressive, bullying sales speak of "if you don't pay today you'll lose the 60% discount". He was so angry he refused to pay for any. if you want a friendly, professional service where you can relax and have some control over what shots you'd like to have taken - do not go to pixifoto Harlow - other pixifotos may be better but this one in particular made us feel like we were on a production line as they then tried to bully us into paying the max amount just to get rid of us quickly - it was very sad and i'll shop around next time and tell all the new mums and NCT friends not to go there.

source: Ciao.uk

Furious with PixiFoto

Another unhappy customer

I am furious with Pixifoto. I just spent over an hour queuing then a twenty minute session and didn't get one decent photo.
The offer is £4.99 for a 'studio session' (which is actually just in the middle of the shop) and a free photo.
The website makes it sound as though any of the pictures they take can be a free one as long as there are no props etc.
Of the 12 photos they took, only one was half decent but they said I couldn't have that as my free one as it had a blue background (!!!).
The free one had to be one of the first four they took which had a white background (all four had one of my children either looking away or with eyes closed or doing that screwed up face smile that 4 year olds love to do).
When i said i wasn't happy with any of the 'free' ones, the photographer said "it's not really our fault if your child doesn't know how to smile".

My advice to anyone thinking of using them is try to make sure the first ones are good ones as this is what you have to choose from if you only want to pay the £4.99 or better still, avoid them altogether!

source: Netmums.com

You suck You get sacked

See how they left 300 people without a job in the blink of an eye.

Random comment

Maybe if they didn't charge such a ridiculous amount for their photos , people would use them more. With mobile phones and personal cameras now taking better photos a posed cheesy expensive studio photo isn't very appealing.

You can find more comments here and here

Read also the warning message of this woman

PixiFoto - A Success Story

Looks like this woman has something very good to say about Pixifoto! Did we come across a rare Pixifoto success story?

Another Pixifoto Failure

Of course no! Just look at the picture the woman is so enthusiastically reviewing. Look at it and tell me if you couldn't have taken the same picture, with the same poor quality with your ipad/iphone/point&shoot camera. The answer is that had you taken the picture with your ipad, chances are you would have gotten a better result!

High Key - Low Skill

A Closer Look

I'm sure that you don't need me to tell you that the image above is technically unacceptable. Look at the whites (highlights). Don't you notice anything strange? Can you see the daddy is disappearing in the background? Looks like he misses one shoulder?
Look at the other highlights in the picture, you'll notice that all the whites are blown out. Check the man's forehead or the girls' socks. Highlights in the subject should not be blown out, there's no artistic reason to do it here. You may think that since this is an high-key portrait it's fine the highlights are washed out. Well, it is not! This photograph technically sucks. Full stop.

Conclusion

This is the quality you are going to find if you book a sitting with Pixifoto. It's the poor quality users are talking about in the online reviews i posted in my previous articles (in case you missed them you find links at the bottom of this post). Use your mobile or entry level dslr (a point & shoot will do it) and take better images, certainly more intimate and personal. And you know what? If the image you take is bad, you can delete it and take another one, for free!

Do you too think Pixifoto is not worth the dear price they ask? Let me know in the comments.

You may want to read also

The gift portrait lie
Pixifoto downs in his own crappiness
Low quality at a high price

The gift portrait lie

If you visit their back-in-the-80s website you'll find out that their promise is to always take a portrait of your baby for free.
Are they telling the truth?

The gift portrait big lie

Let the web speak:

Pixi photo are all about the sales pitch, the best pic isn't the free one that'd involve them giving a ****e about their customers.

i had photos taken by pixi fotos of my daughter last year, like that i got "special offer" of €10 for one print but they took loads of pics on the day. My husband and mother went to collect them and ended up paying €100+ for what they came home with... the quality was sh*t, my daughters hand was out of frame for two pics...

I was told the one of him with the teddy bear ears was going to be the free one - it wasn't the best one by far and I ended up spending E180

What a complete scam - this is obviously how they get people to pay money, by giving them a crappy one for free and hoping they'll buy some of the nicer ones.

Pixie photo is a joke...every kid I know that has had one done is in the same pose..they have no imagination

Conclusion

The gift portrait is just a dire way to extort your money. Often times you'll end up paying for the gift shot. As we have already seen in previous articles quality is poor, some people feel disgusted, some feel ripped off, many feel they could do better with their own cameras.
They are all right!
Remember that hiring a professional (a true professional not these mediocre photographers) or buying a brand new camera is going to cost you less than Pixifoto.

Fell victim of the gift portrait gimmick? Let me know in the comments

Pixifoto drowns in his own crappiness

If you read my previous article you know that people have been posting their rants about Pixifoto since 2007.

Looks like customers in Australia are smarter than us Europeans, as they managed to reduce the demand enough to make Pixifoto go out of business.

While we wait for the awakening to happen in the Old Continent let's analyze the article i just linked. You'll notice that the writer correctly talks about "snaps" and not photographs. Well done! Because that's what they do at Pixifoto, snapshots, not photographs.

This is why my advise, and the one of many others online, is to go and buy a point & shoot camera. You'll get very good results. I can guarantee that with my entry level DSLR i've taken better shots (not snapshots) than what they came up with during the unfortunate sitting i booked with them. With one i even won a contest in flickr! If you don't want to buy a camera consider going to a professional studio.

Hey, wait a moment, isn't Pixifoto a professional studio? NO!
Let me quote a few comments in case you are still in doubt

What people say about Pixifoto

it could be because their quality is so poor and they are extremely expensive. I've never gone back after getting a package of various shots and then realising one shot was just a close up of another and was pixilated as a result.

---

totally agree. We got a package done and the photos were really bad. Unfortunately some of it you only really notice when they're made up in full size. Over exposed, no attention to detail, very rushed, very expensive.
My wife and I decided never to go back. We don't have any of their photos hanging on our walls any more, replaced by much better ones that we made ourselves.

---

The major reason they eventually failed was that they were way too expensive!! I'm surprised they lasted this long.

Have you had a nightmare experience with Pixifoto? Let me know in the comments.

Low quality at a high price

Pixifoto (in some countries Pixiefoto) suck worldwide. It is a fact. They are known to be pricey and provide a low quality service both in terms of customer care and picture quality. And a really really bad communication with the client.

But, hold on, You don't have to trust me on this, just google pixifoto and you'll find several unflattering reviews, scattered in basically every family forum you can find. From UK, to Ireland to Aussie, Pixifoto holds the stunning record of being a regrettable(yet bloody expensive) choice for your family portraits. Seriously, you are better off buying your own camera, very likely you'll wind up getting better results.

How bad they can be

• read what they have to say on Babyexpert
• read the pixifoto warning on Netmums
• read about a disgusted user on Boards.ie
• read about a user who elegantly says they are a pain in the bum, on Baby and Bump
• read about users speculating Pixifoto it's a big scam, on Magic Mum
• and on Quick Sales
• and on Yahoo answers (again)
• and (omg it's the 4th) on Money Saving Expert
• a users asks wtf are they doing??, on Essential Baby
• read about the gift shot scam on Bubhub
• read what people are saying on Babycentre
• read more rants from australia Essential kids
• read even more complaints at My Bounty
• read what people at Not Good Enough are saying
• read more people complaining about how sketchy they are about prices Mums net
• more disgusted customers at Ciao UK
• read customers' reviews on Dooyoo
• read what employees think on Indeed
• read the advise given to perspective employees on Yahoo answers

Convinced? If not, keep reading, I'll tell you my experience and why you should never have your family portraits taken by Pixifoto, especially if you have a GIFT voucher (that is part of the gimmick as i'm about to tell you).

My experience - The ruse explained

The only reason i went to the Pixifoto store is that i had a voucher for a GIFT portrait. Well, first of all i ended up paying ten quids for the GIFT shot. This is only the beginning of their well conceived ruse to sponge money out of partents' pockets. Keep reading.

During the sitting i ask several times how much would cost the whole session, how much is a single picture, and so on. With no luck. They will hide that information and keep that secret. They are trained to circumvent any question about price you might have. Standard answers are:
a) it depends on how many photographs you purchase
b) it will be easier to discuss the price while you are in front of the developed pictures
c) i don't know
d) some other vague reply along the lines of the above examples

So, they take 10 shots and, before leaving the store, they give me an appointment for 2 weeks later to collect the pictures. They present me a Grand total of 930€!. Yes, you read right. Now, that is not the real final price, it's only one part of the gimmick. They apply a permanent promotion discount so the final price is roughly half of the made up figure you are shown initially. In my case the actual price was 375€. Still bloody expensive for 10 shots and 15 minutes work! Here comes the funny part, keep reading.

I'm asked to pay 10€ as a sort of deposit. Unsurprisingly i didn't get back the tenner so i guess that was to cover the GIFT shot (yes, it is not free, it's just to lure you in the store). And that tenner wasn't discounted from the final price either! A wicked way of doing business, isn't it? The price is totally made up depending on how many photographs you decide to buy. Why do i say that? Well, consider the price for a single print is 35€, it's simple math. They wanted 930€ initially, dropped it 375€ with the fake promotion discount and still the math is wrong. 10 shots at 35€ is 350€. See? They are there to rob your money! But let's speak about quality, are the portraits worth the money? Short answer is NO, they aren't, following is the long answer.

Not worth the money

By now, If you read the reviews online, you should know that mine is not an isolated case. Of 10 portraits taken NONE was acceptable. The GIFT portrait was the worst one (unsurprisingly), my child was looking away from the camera!! They said it has been printed by mistake! My arse! Truth is they are unprofessional at the least, they work like in an assembly line, fast paced sessions of 10-15 minutes, with no attention to detail or quality whatsoever.

Frankly, i've taken better shots of my child at home with my camera. The pixifoto shots featured in my case:

• wrong poses
• dirt visible on the floor
• in some shots the exposure is wrong, some important details are clipped
• wrong shadows (due to dirt on the floor)

Customer care

Simply put, their customer care policy is that they don't care! I wrote a complaint letter to Pixifoto...never received a response. Keep in mind that if you book a sitting with them you'll have to wait. I waited 20 minutes for my sitting to begin because they were late. And so did all the parents after me. They don't care. They don't talk straight, they are very cagey about the price. They don't clean the workspace!

Conclusion

I bought one picture (two actually, as i paid the GIFT shot) in the end, out of compassion, after all they worked 10 minutes. My advice, and the advice of many reviewers online, is: don't go there. Buy a camera, use your mobile, or go to a professional studio. You're bound to be disappointed by Pixifoto.

Have you been ripped off by Pixifoto too? Please post your experience in the comments.