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Quality of service
3.0 out of 5 rating
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Average response time
1.0 out of 5 rating
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Professionalism
2.0 out of 5 rating
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Value
3.0 out of 5 rating
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Flexibility
1.0 out of 5 rating
Nice, but poor communicator
Honestly, my experience with Haleema was very mixed. She was very pleasant and easy-to-talk-to, but had issues with communicating in a timely manner, meeting deadlines, and guiding us through the process. We booked her for our upcoming wedding in March 2023 since we liked her photos and pricing, but we ended up forgoing most of our deposit to break our contract since we did not feel like we could rely on her for the day of our wedding.
To go into more details, Haleema had delays in responses more often than not. Even in the beginning when I expressed interest in signing a contract, she wrote: "I can send you the contract today or tomorrow," but took 6 days and a follow-up email from me before completing it. There were also two occasions when she took over a week to respond to me, and another when she took 15 days, all of which I had to follow up on myself. She was also late for 2 out of 3 of our phone calls where she had been the one to decide the time.
Her availability for engagement photos was very frustrating as well. We booked her in March 2022, hoping to have photos for save-the-dates/website use by June/July 2022, but her lack of open days on top of her subpar communication made the process unpleasant. We actually wanted to book as soon as she was available, but in March, her earliest availability she first gave was all the way in June. Unfortunately, by no one's fault, we actually had a shoot booked and canceled three times for reasons outside of our control (heavy rain, COVID, etc.), but they were each over a month apart due to her schedule, even despite us making our weekday evenings as flexible as possible. All in all, we were local to Haleema and we only needed an hour from her for one evening. However, we felt no urgency from her to help us meet our own deadlines.
At one point, towards the end of our interactions, I reached out to Haleema to get her availability after 7/17/23 so we could reschedule our photoshoot. In response, she only offered 8/15/23 (a Monday), which didn't work for us, so I asked her: "Would you be able to give us a list of days you're available, just to minimize the back-and-forth?" After I followed up asking the same question, she replied: "Can you share with me all the dates that you two are available on the weekdays because right now my weekends are booked for all of August.... Thank you!!"
This was especially frustrating, given that her schedule was much less open than ours, and that it made more sense to work off of her availability rather than ours. Finally when we got on a call with her, she said that her August schedule was packed, but she'd have a lot more availability in September. She made no mention of this in our email correspondence, and I couldn't help but feel that she wasn't an effective written communicator.
There's more I could add, but overall, I'm sad to say that we didn't have a good experience with Haleema. Again, she is very nice, but felt unreliable. My fiance and I are fairly laidback and flexible, but we had to make the call to break our contract. Haleema did refund ~11% of our deposit since we didn't get a single photo from her, but we're sad to have lost our money and time. Choose your photographer wisely!
Honestly, my experience with Haleema was very mixed. She was very pleasant and easy-to-talk-to, but had issues with communicating in a timely manner, meeting deadlines, and guiding us through the process. We booked her for our upcoming wedding in March 2023 since we liked her photos and pricing, but we ended up forgoing most of our deposit to break our contract since we did not feel like we could rely on her for the day of our wedding.
To go into more details, Haleema had delays in responses more often than not. Even in the beginning when I expressed interest in signing a contract, she wrote: "I can send you the contract today or tomorrow," but took 6 days and a follow-up email from me before completing it. There were also two occasions when she took over a week to respond to me, and another when she took 15 days, all of which I had to follow up on myself. She was also late for 2 out of 3 of our phone calls where she had been the one to decide the time.
Her availability for engagement photos was very frustrating as well. We booked her in March 2022, hoping to have photos for save-the-dates/website use by June/July 2022, but her lack of open days on top of her subpar communication made the process unpleasant. We actually wanted to book as soon as she was available, but in March, her earliest availability she first gave was all the way in June. Unfortunately, by no one's fault, we actually had a shoot booked and canceled three times for reasons outside of our control (heavy rain, COVID, etc.), but they were each over a month apart due to her schedule, even despite us making our weekday evenings as flexible as possible. All in all, we were local to Haleema and we only needed an hour from her for one evening. However, we felt no urgency from her to help us meet our own deadlines.
At one point, towards the end of our interactions, I reached out to Haleema to get her availability after 7/17/23 so we could reschedule our photoshoot. In response, she only offered 8/15/23 (a Monday), which didn't work for us, so I asked her: "Would you be able to give us a list of days you're available, just to minimize the back-and-forth?" After I followed up asking the same question, she replied: "Can you share with me all the dates that you two are available on the weekdays because right now my weekends are booked for all of August.... Thank you!!"
This was especially frustrating, given that her schedule was much less open than ours, and that it made more sense to work off of her availability rather than ours. Finally when we got on a call with her, she said that her August schedule was packed, but she'd have a lot more availability in September. She made no mention of this in our email correspondence, and I couldn't help but feel that she wasn't an effective written communicator.
There's more I could add, but overall, I'm sad to say that we didn't have a good experience with Haleema. Again, she is very nice, but felt unreliable. My fiance and I are fairly laidback and flexible, but we had to make the call to break our contract. Haleema did refund ~11% of our deposit since we didn't get a single photo from her, but we're sad to have lost our money and time. Choose your photographer wisely!
