Friday, February 20, 2009

A Letter to the Hatemailers

My father taught me that in business, even if it were not my fault, to just apologise. So I say sorry to you for making you upset, angry or unhappy.

I am sorry that we cannot give you another saturday slot when you miss your scheduled saturday appointment by not showing up at all or giving us less than a day's notice. I miss spending saturdays with my family because of the nature of my job which has fullday shoots lined up on saturdays. When you do not show up, that is an hour of time I could have spent with my boys.

I am sorry that I did not receive your email, I do not know why some emails get lost in transmission. I will check with my service provider to make sure this doesn't happen again. Generally I reply all my emails within 24-36hours of receiving them. Please call us in the studio for faster response.

I am sorry that we "force" you to wear certain clothes for your shoot. We were merely offering our professional opinions and suggestions on what would turn out better in your photographs. You need not show your displeasure by refusing to smile or cooperate, simply telling me how you feel there and then would suffice. We would have respected your decision, thereby resulting in less friction during the shoot and a better outcome altogether.

I am sorry that we are "unoriginal" in using certain props/fabric/poses over and over again. If we can take your suggestion of pasting your faces over the same props/fabric/poses, that would really make our job easier, thanks for the brilliant idea.

I am sorry that I wasn't Singa the Courtesy Lion when replying your SMS as I was busy shooting when your text came through and had to multi-task. I apologise for the typo in my text which you repeatedly made fun of by posting it on my forum thread.

I am sorry that you feel the need to pass judgement on me or my business when you have never met me or come for a shoot before.

I am sorry that I am too direct when speaking and that I am no good at honeycoating words. I wear my heart on my sleeves and I understand now that this is not a good trait for running a business. I will try my best to improve in this area.

I apologise that I have no training in customer servicing, marketing or running a business. This shows up as flaws as I try to do all these roles while being a mother and wife. And no, I do not have a maid.

I am sorry again for all the above but will continue to learn and improve as I go along, taking all that you will throw at me, because I love what I do and for the 2 reasons below.







7 comments:

Anonymous said...

i don't know how you could deal with hatemails but i think it is best to ignore them. unreasonable customers will always be there, so don't take heart to it.

maryann koh said...

thank you for your advice, i have learnt to not take things so personal anymore. it really stings and hurts when i get such mail but time heals all wounds.

Anonymous said...

i know wat u mean and i wonder why he came to u when he doesn't like ur style. i tot he shd hv seen ur works before gog to u. i love ur style and my hubby does too. i think he is simply at the wrong door for a wrong shoot.

DinoMama said...

I think Hotmail is having some problem. A month ago I was unable to log into my acct, error msg received was something wrong with the server that my acct was with. Reported to Hotmail n 4 days later my acct was restored w/o my old msgs! I asked the Hotmail IT guy n he says their record shows that my acct has been inactive for the pass few months. HELLO! I log in EVERYDAY ok!

Anyway I have overcome the lost of some very memorable old msgs. Then u know wat???? 2 weeks later my acct was empty again! My very few new msgs was GONEZ!

This time I did not even bothered to check with Hotmail n decided to migrate all my contacts some where else.

U can check out all the problems Hotmail is having currently over here http://windowslivehelp.com/Default.aspx Apparantly alot of pple has problem with their Hotmail.

Last but not least, cheers~ u have many more supportors!

Anonymous said...

I thought your pictures were absolutely beautiful.. so .. agree.. don't take it to heart. Too bad I missed your V-day walk in tho... :(

~yvonne

J.H said...

So I heard : Hate and Love always comes together. Even the kindest soul like Lady Diana or Mother Theresa bound to have haters, so don't be discourage. I would say that concentrate on people that love your works (and there is tons of them) rather than discouraged over few that try to picking up on you. I really inspired by your works :-) I should drop by your studio when I returned to south east asia.

Inspira said...

This is waaay late..but I just chanced upon your thread. I LURVE your photos. To those who passed comments and judgements on how you photograph, I wonder why they can't take their own photos since they know so much about photography to do that --> *insert eye roll here* Pfftt. These people talk big only.