Videographer Nightmare!!

We hired Filmitrite Video Production to tape our wedding in May of 2007. We asked him to tape our ceremony and reception, and turn over the tapes to us at the end of the event as we were planning to edit the video ourselves. He gave us a good price and accepted us as a client. From there, things just went downhill. Every other vendor stayed in touch with us, gave us updates on their services, and confirmed to the wedding schedule. We were not able to get in touch with Filmitrite until the day before the event to tie up any loose ends. And according to him at that time, everything was in order. The day of the event everything was going great, until it was time for the ceremony to start, no videographer. My wife was devastated, stressing out, crying, and panicking about what to do. Finally some woman shows up with camera equipment 10 minutes late. Apparently, he outsourced our event to someone else and never told us about it, and according to her gave her very little information on what to do and where to be. It would have been nice to know someone else was going to be taping our event. We had a contract with Filmitrite to film our ceremony with two cameras and the reception with one camera, and it would be for a total of five hours. The woman he hired only brought one camera and she didn’t stay for the full event. She left early and took all the tapes with her, except for one that we found laying in the lobby for anyone to pick up. We didn’t know who the woman was or how to contact her. For an entire month after the wedding we were calling and emailing Filmitrite to get our footage. Only after threatening legal action, he responded to me saying he can’t get in touch with the woman and at best can offer our money back, but he would still try to reach her. Since an event like a wedding is a once in a lifetime event, I wanted the memories, not the money. I kept asking for updates on where our footage was. Again no response for weeks. After posting our story on forums and blogs, I finally got him to respond. He called and left a heated voicemail accusing me of slander and threatening to take legal action against me. I immediately called him back demanding where my wedding footage was. He still claimed he didn’t have it, can’t get in touch with her, and told me he would refund our money, and reluctantly I accepted. Weeks later, I was still waiting for my refund. He didn’t even respond to a letter from our lawyer. After several more emails, we finally get a check for $200, not the full $350 like he originally stated. I kept emailing him and asking where the full refund was, again no response. He finally calls us several weeks ago and offers to at least get us the footage that was recorded on the DJ’s camera, since it had the entire reception. Again, after several emails, we haven’t seen that yet either. The one tape we do have is only 45 minutes of raw footage, and it’s missing several important moments; such as the cutting of the cake, father/daughter dance, mother/son dance, garter/bouquet toss, anniversary dance, and the last dance. Our family and friends watched it and can’t believe we paid for such low quality of footage. Needless to say I would not recommend this service for anything.