Our schools decided to change to this, after using 'The School Photographer' for years. MSP is rubbish in comparison. We happily paid the previous photography business, to get high quality photos in protective plastic sleeves, with print quality digital downloads. MSP's cardboard sleeve leaves the overpriced photos vulnerable to damage and is an… Read more
awkward size that doesn't sit evenly with previous years photos on a shelf, jutting put to paper cut anyone who dares to walk to close. Having to sign up for an account with all our personal details is ridiculous. No surprise spam calls and phishing emails increased after that. Selling off our details for extra profits? The packages are a scam. No one needs a million little photos. There should be a smaller package option! We loved using 'The School Photographer's photo calendar and photo bookmark each year. This year was a total disappointment with MSP Photography. Parents need to band together and boycott these rip off businesses. Oh and yes, another messy hair photo here too, from having photos after lunch break i.e hat. What happened to taking pride in ones work?
Super expensive, child’s photos come back with messy hair. Such a rip off whole family’s are struggling! Having to pay $150 for 2 children’s photos plus a sibling photo. I expected much better photos and atleast someone to fix my child’s hair sticking up
Terrible quality photos and over priced. And special group photos (e.g. School Captains or School Sports Teams) is the biggest rort I’ve ever seen. MSP don’t send out an order form for these photos as you need to ring them and order these over the phone and then they charge $20 Archiving Fee !!! So one group photo costs $50 in total. They certainly have parents/carers over a barrel. No thank you, I’ll go without.
Reviews with attachments
Zero star rate I would give. Worst and family-unfriendly school photo service. Every year they introduce a new way to increase and incur fees. Now they close ordering 2 weeks after photo day to make $20 fees from busy parents. Why schools keep using this worst photo service?
My photo was terrible. They didn't let me look at my photo and shoved me along. This isn't fair as my parents had to pay nearly 100 dollars for my photo and I wasn't even allowed to look at it. Last year they photoshopped my nose ring out the photo. It's 100% not worth it. [Content Removed].
Very poor photography in my opinion – The lofo cropped in half on scholl shirt… looked very unprofessional. Not professional photos. Tried to ring and complain but eas hung up on 3 times because they didn’t like my tone!! I cant pretend im happy when im not. I’ve coloured name for privacy reasons but you can see the “crop work”
Absolute rort and rip-off – Overpriced and low quality photos. An absolute scam that takes advantage of its monopoly on the market. When I was at school the photographers used film and pro cameras, and required some skill. Today, excellent quality photos can be taken with a cheap mobile phone by anyone, and poor photos easily discarded or edited. The individual MSP student… Read more
photos have in our case been very poor. Maybe a class photo is good to have memories of classmates, but $36 just for that alone! I have had enough of this rort. From now on not only will we not purchasing any of these photos from MSP, but we will also be witholding our child from participating in the shoot as a protest.
MSP have the school market! OVER Priced and HORRIBLE Photos with no care taken! – With SADNESS I watched MSP come in and take over, and slowly push out our local school photographer companies many years ago buy under cutting them. Then prices and MSP's growth just grew and grew. Photos got worse. They dont even get the kids to tidy up their hair. They NEVER offered just portrait photos in the high school packs, so you were… Read more
forced to buy a Class Photo With a portrait for a crazy price. (class photos are just a bunch of other kids from different year levels, who wants those?) So I rang them up, Oh! you have to ring up for the choice of a "Portrait Only" option, I was happy with $29. So the happened after I complained to the school, and told others to ring up for the option, then, low and behold, it became an option, but changed to $32.... WOW!!!!!! for a crappy rushed taken photo. So today I get a Form for ADVANCED Life Photos, great I think! finally a new company, but the prices are still as high, mmm..... Oh the CEO of MSP also is now attached to and Gneral manager of Advanced Life?????? go figure. Again..... will be interesting to see if their photos are taken better, which I highly doubt....as they are still expensive for what they are.....but mothers guilt.....every year, school photos....gives them business.
Latest follow-ups
Photos never delivered to school, I caught them out in a lie, and now I have to wait another 2 weeks for reprints. Not even an apology, just some smarty pants girl saying she is sorry I feel like this as if it’s my fault they stuffed the order up. Disgusting behaviour.
Follow-up · Absolutely horrible experience. Had to wait for months for reprint photos, no apology, no communication, I had to chase and chase. It was made clear that I was at the bottom of the list and they would get to me when they would get to me. They don’t care about customers what so ever. I missed my turn because of their stuff up, and I had to wait… Read more
Positive reviews
Great customer service via email at Bundoora Branch – My experience with the Bundoora branch has been absolutely amazing. Very helpful staff, prompt replies to emails, always happy to answer my enquiries and they even helped me access old shootkeys for digital downloads. My daughter's primary school used this company and I'm so glad that her high school also uses MSP Photography because their customer service is second to none.
5 years of Happiness! – I’ve had 2 girls receive their school photo packages from MSP for the last 5 (and 3 for my youngest) and I honestly couldn’t be happier! They take such lovely photographs! Even the whole class pics always look great - that must be such a challenge!
Thank you MSP – My son decided he would have a Mullet for his grade 12 school photo. The photographer from MSP had my son turn his head slightly, this angle hid the Mullet.
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Negative reviews
Talk about having you by the short and curlys! Every year the prices go up. It feels mercenary. In a few years the prices have nearly doubled for a basic pack. I want my child to remember their friends in each year but it's frustrating how having a monopoly means they can keep hiking prices.
I love my daughter dearly but her school photos were the worst photos I’ve ever seen of her! Her lips were together like she wasn’t ready, they zoomed right in on her tinny little face making her look like she had a massive head. And to think they charge so much for zero effort is disgusting. Why are schools using them still!
Absolutely hate my daughters photos, seems as though they didn’t even try to get her to smile.. the digital photo I received is such poor quality I had to take a photo of the physical photo.. will not be purchasing again if the daycare use this company
Recent reviews
Overpriced school photography . They want the payment months before you actually get the photo. Why wont the state education department get another company to do the school photos ?
Worst customer service, unhelpful, punitive, blames everyone except there own policy. I wish the school did not use this company. Every year it's another horrible rude phonecall instead of supportive communication. I wish I could give them 0 stars. This is not a one off problem, it's been ongoing for years. They have the monopoly over the schools. Something needs to change. I'm not the only family that feels like this.
Absolutely disappointed by the customer service received when contacting the Gold Coast Northern Rivers Branch today. I wanted to enquire about the possibility of purchasing 2024 & 2025 portraits of my child. i didn't need a whole pack. i was hoping to buy either a wallet size photo of each year or perhaps just a digital copy of each year that i… Read more
could print myself. purchasing 2 packs, even at the lowest cost would be well over $100 and completely excessive for my needs. the lady who answered the phone was rude and abrupt and decided it was best to try an educate me on how a franchise worked rather than seeing if there was anything at all she could do to help. she told me i would have to buy the group pack which is $39.00 and then purchase the additional portrait download which would be another $20.00 on top. i would have to do this for both 2024 & 2025 years equaling $118.00.. and that's not including the $15 on top of both years because we weren't able to purchase in time.. so all up it would be $148.00 just for two wallet sized photos ... make this make sense? my school used to go through advantage life photography.. i have no idea why they would change when this is the customer service, limited options and price expectation received. Advantage life gives the option to order just the digital photos and i got the previous 6 years of headshots for all for $40.00!! if it was up to me i would not purchase through these guys again but sadly its the schools decision and now because of this pricing structure and rude staff on the phone at this company, we are without the possibility of having the photos of our child. they need to consider digital copies or at least a package for a single portrait being an option for family who just don't need those huge packages.. so disheartened by this whole thing.
Unfortunately very unhelpful company. My daughter missed her year 6 photo and thus didn't have a photo for her grad book - the school admin staff requested for them to use last year's photo for her grad book or an alternative photo taken by the school. This was refused by MPS. They offered for us to drive over a 2hr drive in order to make up… Read more
the photo which unfortunately was not feasable. Reading all the other reviews below it's not surprising the company is so unhelpful. I have asked the school to re-consider using them in future.
They charge a $20 “late” fee if payment is made within 2 weeks of the photos being taken, yet it has now been over 3 months and we are still waiting to receive them. It is disappointing to be penalised for paying later, while there appears to be no urgency in delivering the product.
So angry!! For the amount you charge per school package, one would assume you would take a few photos and not give the parents one where you haven’t done anything. Nothing I’m fine. I’m just the kid is blinking. Hopefully you won’t be used for our schools photos next year!! Absolute [Content Removed]!
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They take your money. You pay for the digital download. There is nothing to download. They can find your shootkey so you can pay. Try entering the same shootkey and you can't get any photos. Over-priced scammers. Can't wait to be disappointed by the actual photo if that ever shows up.
Just got my kids photos today and they are the worst ever. My daughter’s hair are all over her face, they could at least ask them to fix it a little. Hair always get messy because of hats etc. The family photo wasn’t taken in enough light and is so dark. Completely hopeless
Shocking customer service and awful organisational skills. I have twins attending the same class and ordered the Siblings Premium pack. Other than the order confirmation automated email, two months have passed and I had no word from them. I paid more for the digital photo and not even that came through email. Digging into the issue, I found out… Read more
that they didn't even take the photo I paid for and were suggesting to take the kids to the studio to take the photos I paid for. Why could they not have done the job when they were supposed to? No compensation, no apology, no excuse, just shoving the client around like they're important.
Terrible school photos - both of my daughters do not look like themselves. This company has changed their hair colour and skin colour. Both of my daughters are blonde and they hair is changed to brown. They seemed to of done this to all of the children - why pay for this service if you kids don’t look like themselves? They complain they have no time to prepare for the photos either, they take the photo as soon as it’s your turn.
The ever-worse quality of the pictures. Never advising/preparing the students for how to make natural pose for the photos. Very disappointed with the outcome of photos with them. Will be careful in the future.
Missed out on year 12 and year 11 photos due to Cyclone Alfred hitting our islands. Even missed the makeup session. Called about 1.5 month after first photoshoot, begged to have the kids photo taken, we would travel anywhere, offered to pay double…lady was rude and absolutely refused to help saying it is not possible to do it as mucks up their… Read more
system. Just couldn’t quite understand what is the problem. We are left now with no last year photos…sorry if we had a cyclone go through and 1.5 month passed coz our priority was the aftermath of the cyclone…these people have no heart , no understanding.
Completely over priced. To pay the amount that we pay and still get charged a $20 processing fee like wth. Purchased a basic pack to only see that their downloadable prints are not print quality. Like come on you charge high prices at least make all your downloadables print quality.
Just received my grandchildren’s school photos. They are terrible and look like mug shots. Is this company really a professional photography studio? I could do better with my iPhone.
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