Jeff D.
Poor technical execution
Poor technical execution. I've placed two orders with Lifetouch online in the last year and they've both been messed up. Lifetouch and Shutterfly have apparently "teamed" up and what that means I don't know but when I tried to log in and give the portrait ID, none of it worked and I was finally prompted to open a Shutterfly account, which I didn't want. Confirmation emails were then received and then one from Shutterfly giving me access to the digital photos. The photos were the right school, right sport, wrong boy. Given that Lifetouch had messed up my last order I felt I should reach out as I was likely about to receive the wrong photos. Of course the contact number on the Shutterfly email took me to a person that couldn't help me because I needed to speak to Lifetouch that apparently wasn't that close of a "team" member; this errant attempt to find a solution took 15 minutes. I was given a number for Lifetouch, put on hold, dropped, called again, put on hold, spoke to a person that could not understand me and put me on repeated holds in order to get me to the right person. The person I ended up with was pleasant and helpful but sometimes I wonder if we eliminated the phrase " Mr. X I do apologize" from their lexicon would they be able to communicate at all - stop with the pre-scripted responses! This poor technical execution, poor representation of the Lifetouch + Shutterfly relationship, and added complexity brought on by an overzealous sales effort that overwhelms the resources they dedicate to providing customer service is all too commonplace. These are management decisions. The poor front line workers are left to clean up their poor marketing decisions, their lack of clarity and they're asked to do it with little or no resources. Proven by the fact that you're constantly on hold waiting for someone. This just a common theme in most of these tech adjacent industries. They also asked me to delete the photos of the young man they sent. The thought that my underage son's photos might be sent to some rando did disturb me.