Should I leave a bad review? weddingplanning

I'm getting married in September 2016, so I'm assembling vendors.

The majority of them, in my opinion, have been pretty unprofessional. Most of the problem is that they don't seem to answer emails...like...at all...but there have been other issues. I hate to leave bad reviews, especially when I never got to experience how they would behave on my wedding day, but as a bride who does a fair amount of research with online reviews in my careful search, I would've liked a heads-up about these vendors who I feel have wasted more time than the vendors who simply don't reply:

1. A photographer whom I emailed back and forth with 3 or 4 times. Very responsive, but annoyingly didn't seem to want to ballpark his prices. He did say his packages start at $2,500, but this was after asking in his website contact form how much we are looking to spend (I was slightly miffed by that, but got over it). The serious issue with him was that we scheduled an appointment to discuss pricing, and it required that I leave work two hours early to travel 45 minutes to his offices. When we arrived (15 minutes early), he wasn't home. I called him, and he quickly returned my call to tell me that his refrigerator had gone out over the weekend, and getting a new one was taking longer than he thought, but that he would be home within half an hour. My fiance said no way are we waiting. Photographer sent several apologetic emails, although they were a little guilt-trippy for my taste ("I regret being 15 minutes late, as my food was falling out of my fridge. Please let me make this up to you.") I feel particularly bad leaving a negative review, as he doesn't have many and a 2-star review would kill his ratings. Also, photographers being self-employed and all...its going to hurt them more than your average review for a David's Bridal dress. Should I leave one anyway?

2. A caterer we wanted to speak with very kindly offered to meet us at our venue-probably an hour drive for her. Bonus points for her! I again have to take off early from work, but that isn't a humongous issue for me if I don't do it too often. She spends an hour with us, and we go over a ton of ideas. She says she'll get a quote together. One week later she sends me an email to update me that she doesn't have a quote yet, but will get it to me by the end of the week. Cool beans. The weeks ends, no quote. So two weeks after our initial meeting, I email her to make sure she hadn't sent it to the wrong address. She apologizes and says she will have it to me by week's end "I promise". That week ends with no contact as well, but the following week (3 weeks after the meeting) she sends me a quote. A lot of the ideas we discussed are not there, making me think its been so long that she forgot what we talked about. She apologizes for being late, and says she had 'an accident' at a wedding over the weekend, which made her unable to get the quote to me. By now I've decided not to use her anyway, so I don't point out that she had 'promised' us the quote before the weekend anyway.

So, Weddit, do either of these vendors deserve a bad review, or am I unnecessarily hurting someone's livelihood over non-important details?

Submitted July 13, 2015 at 01:24AM by shuhray http://ift.tt/1URFf6a weddingplanning