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Another Issue, friends?

R.Perry

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I have a realtor acquaintance that I have done work for in the past, a personal friend, so yes I worked cheap, local, one home, interior photos and one short video. I charged her a hundred bucks, and I know that is dirt cheap but she is a close friend of my wife.

There is a young man in the area that does great work, and is just getting started. Here is the thing, she called for me to do another shoot. I really didn’t want to do it, so I referred her to the above-mentioned person. She called back the next day and said he was too expensive, and of course the wife got involved.

I asked what he his fees were, she said $350.00. I told her that is a good deal because if she hadn’t been a friend, I would have asked for at least 450. Well you can figure the rest of the story, wife got involved and the sh____ hit the fan. Then I find out the listing wasn’t even hers, but one of the other realtors in her office.

I finally told her I wasn’t interested in doing real estate any longer and I was very busy, that was a lie, I’m not that busy. I said all this to say, don’t cut your rates to help a friend out. That is easy to say, but hard to do.
So, should I have done the shoot for her cheap as a friend or helped someone else get started?
 
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So, should I have done the shoot for her cheap as a friend or helped someone else get started?

You did her a favor. That is not a contract for life. You did her another favor by referring her to an up and coming person who needed the work and would do a good job for her. Don't beat yourself up. You did what you needed to do.
 
You already did one favor for her. Beyond that one, she's taking advantage of a friendship.

Maybe you could have let her know that in the beginning, but still, you did nothing wrong and overall she is really in your debt and should be grateful.

Just remember that no good deed goes unpunished.
 
My 2 cents... VERY well done sir.

I do offer a "Friends & Family" discount but not nearly that cheap but that's a personal choice. I respect you for referring and I'm glad to see the new guy isn't working for beer $$.

KUDOS to you!!
 
Any bets that if the up and comer used 50.00 as a basic rate you would have been asked to do another shoot or if a family member of the agent flew drones, licensed or not, you would have been ever asked at all?

For a little more fun ask the agent how many points they would shave off the commission if they were representing a friend.
 
Don’t even bother to think any more on it, it’s a cultural thing. Everyone looks to pay the cheapest price they can but at the same time are unwilling to reduce what they charge for their work. A “one way street” sort of thing.
 
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you responded appropriately. for this and other reasons, i have maintained a "no family or friends" assignment policy. it may seem harsh, but it circumvents so many problems.
 
600k home at 6% commission and she can't afford 350 bucks, that's why I gave up real estate.

With you on that. After retiring I gave real estate imagery a go, setting $250.00 as a minimum fee. At that price jobs were few and as soon as some guy with a new Phantom came on the scene advertising a fee of $50.00 for all real estate work I just walked away from it.

Just for laughs I checked out his work on his FB page and found two things; the agents were getting what they paid for and the photographer had no qualms plagiarizing work done by others to create his “demo reel”.
 
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My father once told me, "never mix business with friends and relatives, he was right." When I first bought the phantom it was for the purpose of doing roof inspections, and it worked very well for that purpose, the other purpose was my photographic hobby, that turned into a part time business.
Real Estate Aerial videos don't take long to shoot, but the processing and editing takes some time. Interior shoots are very time consuming if one wants to give the client high quality photos for their listing. I have had as many as seven layers (seven shoots) on one room, then the Photoshop time takes time. The average client sees you take a couple hours to do the shoot, they don't see the work required afterwords.
Now I would never claim to be professional photographer, but I strive to give quality results, it is an insult when others don't value your time and effort. I come to the conclusion that real estate people are not much different than used car salesmen.
 
Just for fun, agree to extend the discount again, but insist they come for your Amway presentation :)
 
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I always use the same line when confronted with this sort of thing:. "Return the unused portion of the product and I'll return the unused portion of your money..."
Mr Perry, to me the fact that you were willing to try and help a friend is what matters. What that friend did with your act of kindness is on them.
 
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I'd like to add "and Family" to the Friends side of things. I've debated with myself sharing the following for a couple months but it's time to put it out there to receive thoughts about the best way to deal with it. Some background required.

My daughter is a large CA county assistant district attorney married to a really great guy that works in the construction field. Recently my son in law left a company he was part owner in to take a position as either a superintendent or project manager with a real estate development company. Both are extremely aware of my long involvement with drones and manned aviation, along with my having a commercial drone company.

Christmas last year saw me passing a Blade Chroma 4k on to my grand kids through their Dad. Before passing it down it was fully checked out and tuned up to assure it functioned as well as it did when new. A documentation package was prepared and delivered with user instructions, FAA requirements, links to FAA registration pages and regulations, links to spare parts sources, links to image processing software, along with special instructions for using the camera, a file of images shot with the camera, and articles about photography. Personal flight instruction was provided to Dad and each grand child.

So a couple months ago my wife sends me a note to expect a call from my son in law about using a drone to take pictures of a future development site. I get the call and he tells me his employer wants him to fly a drone and shoot the pictures. The site is located well within LAANC serviced Class D airspace. I ask if he obtained a 107. The reply was no. I asked if he ever registered himself to make legal use of any camera drone. He replied in the negative and said that was no problem as the company bought a drone for him to use. Turns out it was the higher end of the cheap Holystone drone series priced around $130.00 or so with a very wide angle lens 1080 camera. I asked if the drone or the company had been registered with the FAA and the reply was again negative. He made a pretty dumb statement about how the images would not be used for commercial purposes. I countered that with a BS call as a real estate developer would not shoot the 14 acre property unless there was a commercial purpose involved.

So his questions revolved around how to fly the drone, shoot a good real estate picture using a drone, and how to best use the camera included with the "company" drone. Remaining as pleasant as possible I explained how what he intended to do was illegal, and had no impact on his intent to fly. Conversation with his wife, the ADA, explaining the legal ramifications of his actions had pretty much equal effect. It's pretty darn hard having such conversations with family, especially family tasked with trying criminal case law, while avoiding offending them. I even offered to make the 200 mile drive and do the shoot for his employer legally, with a fee just large enough to cover gasoline cost. Nope, no thanks.

Ultimately, he did the shoot, delivering images with such horrible barrel distortion the ends of the horizon almost met at the bottom of the image. Absolutely terrible and totally unusable. I've pretty much turned my back on both of them regarding any future drone assistance inquiries and now rather regret ever giving him and his kids the Chroma in the first place. Not that he's ever used it or intends to. If he did he would find it shot as good an image as he would ever need for his employer, but I certainly won't tell him that.

So how the heck do we deal with situations like that?
 
You would have been better served if you had devoted all that effort to drinking ice cold beer. Maybe the wife would still wind up being mad, but you would feel a whole lot happier.

Thanks for sharing a lesson in living. With no loss of life or property, ya' done good! ?
 
Interesting Pad, it is a shame when you attempt to do the right thing and get bit for it. Years ago when I was crop dusting and doing the family farms, yes I mean plural, three families, three farms. They thought is was terrible that I would charge them the same as I did others, and I've been the black sheep every since.
One of the nephews got his private license and then decided he was going to jump into the Cessna 188, thankfully the family nixed it before he had an opportunity to kill himself.
Back then I established a rule, business is business and faimly and friends aren't part of the business. Somehow I forgot the rule and created the problems for myself.
Pat what you were suppose to do is drive the 200 miles, do the shoot for free, buy them all lunch, and thank them for the experience, NOT.
 
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Using the experience as an educational tool, it seems fairly illustrative of the general state of societal and business ethics for our time. Everyone wants law and order, public safety, and rules to guide certain types of activities, but only when they impact someone else, not ourselves.

The son in law I can sort of understand as he was being pressured by his employer, with that pressure likely self induced after mentioning at some point he had a drone and/or a family member that was a professional operator. The prosecuting attorney daughter, sworn to uphold the law, is the one that troubles me.
 
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Using the experience as an educational tool, it seems fairly illustrative of the general state of societal and business ethics for our time. Everyone wants law and order, public safety, and rules to guide certain types of activities, but only when they impact someone else, not ourselves.

The son in law I can sort of understand as he was being pressured by his employer, with that pressure likely self induced after mentioning at some point he had a drone and/or a family member that was a professional operator. The prosecuting attorney daughter, sworn to uphold the law, is the one that troubles me.
She must have lost her way in law school, where she was likely hanging around too many future criminal defense attorneys! It clearly wasn't bad parenting, when you are modeling and living the preferred conduct!
 
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