Here's the story. I was hired to do a highlight dvd for a little league basketball team. Actually by one of the parents. When I spoke with her about the dvd she immediately said yes. At the time I was under the impression that she was covering the cost because I never saw her ask anyone about it. Well after the season ended I got in contact with her to let her know that I had completed the dvds and she said she had to collect from everyone. No big deal but 3 months later after emailing her several time and calling her with no response I assumed that the dvd's were not going to get sold. One of the parents is a friend of mine and he had the email add of all the parents from the team. He fowarded it to me and I sent this email.


Hello my name is Lalo and I was hired to do a video highlights dvd for your St Mary's basketball team by *****. Don't know if she has gotten in touch with you or not but to this day I still have a stack of dvds on my desk. I think what happened was that she placed the order for everyone without asking anyone about it. If anyone is interested in the dvd I will be willing to sell them for $** per dvd. My current rate is $** and at the time she placed the order I was selling them for $**.


That was sent June 23 and now she has gotten in touch with me and accusing me of disparaging her in the email. The dvds ended up being purchased by the coaches wife which was very nice of her. Now this lady is saying I owe her 2 dvd's that she ordered which she never payed for. I told her to get in contact with the coaches wife because she had the dvd's. Now she thinks I need to send everyone an email to clarify that I was not trying to disparage her.

This is her email:
I personally would never send out a global email disparaging anyone. As far as whether I feel "worried" - that is not the term I would use to describe my feelings on this situation. What concerns me is the end-result of your global email. By your remarks about me, you involved my child. It is the reflection on my child, as a result of your global email

How would you handle this one? My intention was to collect my money for the work I put into the video. I need Dr. Phil.

I guess I would send out one more email that is more general to all the families. Something in the line of "thank you for letting me highlight my work by highlighting the team"..."communication errors happen all the time, and I am glad that everything has worked out well"..."it's nice to see that all of you have an
active role in your child's team"..."I hope you enjoyed my work and please don't hesitate to contact me next season or for any other video production needs".

Basically soften up the blow that the lady got. Pump up your work and make it more of a follow-up or suggestions for the future. Also in the future you might want to name names until asked individually.

Good luck.

Thanks David for the suggetion. That's a good idea and think I will give it a shot. I'll let you know how it turns out.

You made no mention of a deposit. Did you get one? I would not even open my camera case without a big one in these type of situations. This will help prevent further situations like this and reduce damage from an impulse buyer such as this lady. People will "buy" anything and everything as long as they don't have to pay for it.

If it were not for the coach's wife, you would still have a stack of DVDs on your desk. I personally have a strong distaste for people like this. I'm sure what you said about her in the email is a lot nicer than what I would of told her. You spend a lot of time on the DVD I'm sure. And she tried to waste your time and money. Don't send any apology.

I would have to give her a piece of my mind.

I get the impression that you don't have it down in writing. You should have written down an agreement and a price and all the details. Keep in mind, mothers who don't know anything about video composition don't know anything about video composition. A lot of people I know think creating a video is as simple as throwing a few random shots into a video editor, an automatic one at that. She probably doesn't understand how much work you put into the video and the stack of DVDs. If possible, get her phone number, so she will be speaking to your directly. Next time I would work out everything so a situation like this doesn't come up in the future.