i am a wedding photographer. i did a wedding for a client for R3000. in our contract it stated 250 edit photos on USB

1 photographer

6 hours.

bride getting ready

groom getting ready

church photos

family photos

couple shoot

reception photos

.so 2 weeks ago my hard drive crashed but I could recover 99% of the photos. in the process 4 family photos could not be recovered. now the client want R1700 refund for 4 family photos that got lost. i offered her a free photoshoot from myself or either one of my other photographer friends. but she wants the R1700 cash. so she wants more than half the money back for 4 photos.

i gave her 300 photos instead for 250

i gave her 7 hours instead of 6 hours

i gave her 2 photographers instead of 1

no where in our contract stated specific people need to be in a specific photo.

what are my legal rights?

i already gave her 7 hour at wedding service and edit 300 photos and delivered my work. in her own words stated "I was the best" and now want more that 50% money back because 4 photos got lost. 

Hi there and thank you for your question,

I am a practicing attorney based in South Africa and I will assist you with your question. Please feel free to ask as many follow up questions in order to clarify your question. If you have a new question, you must please open a new thread.

From what you've said above, she has absolutely no legal right to claim the return of any money from you. You complied with your side of the agreement in that you gave her what you contracted for.

At no point in time, as you say, was it agreed that you would take a certain number of photos of family, etc. It was left up to you to decide how many photos to take of each stage of the wedding.

You must tell her that you have complied with the agreement, and that you will not be returning any money to her because you went above and beyond in giving her service!

Your risk (obviously) is that she goes to Facebook and writes a negative post about you. If that happens, you should reply with the facts, but keep your reply VERY professional!

If there is a part of the answer which you need more advice on, or clarity please continue in this same thread instead of opening a new question.

Att. Patrick

Please remember this is a dialog if you have follow up questions please use the REPLY button and ask. If I did not answer the question you thought you were asking, please respond with the specific question you wanted answered. I hope you found my answer helpful, and you have finished asking your questions, please click on the GREEN ACCEPT button in order to mark the question as closed.