My Kissing Hands

2^nd UPDATE: Owner wrote me *again* to complain: «Really…God help you. Unilocal is removing your review now… God help you. I will pray you find happiness. God help you. So sad.» (All of this negative personal judgment because I shared my experience on Unilocal?)
UPDATE: The owner sent me an email complaining that I posted about my experience. Her message (Subject: «I will Pray for You’) contained sarcasm, reiterated her inaccurate version of the facts, complained about the cost of return shipping (even though I used the US Postal Service as she advised), and criticized me personally. All of this is uncalled for and unprofessional.
ORIGINAL REVIEW: I tried to use My Kissing Hands, hosted by Lil Lamb Boutique in Annapolis MD, to have my second child’s foot and handprints pressed in soft clay, then glazed with his name and birthdate, for a keepsake. Long story short, I had to abandon the entire process after investing way too much time.
At the impression appointment, I told the My Kissing Hands owner that I wanted to buy a plaque that matched the content of my older child’s plaque, so she asked me to email her a photo of that plaque, which I did as soon as I got home. Over two months later, I received the plaque by mail. My baby’s birthdate was wrong, because the year was 2015 instead of 2014, a date that hadn’t even happened yet. An obvious error that should have been caught prior to mailing. Also the glaze was runny in part of the writing. She said she could not fix it and would do it over. However, there was not a local opportunity scheduled anytime soon. I was disappointed to be losing the tiny prints made when the baby was very young and brainstormed ways to correct it to salvage the prints, but she refused anything but starting over from scratch. It took MANY emails back and forth to get the owner to agree to a satisfactory resolution, mainly because she insisted on getting the worthless item back (even after seeing photos), AND she expected the customer to pay return shipping! Finally after several more emails she agreed to reimburse me for return shipping. She should have just accepted a photo of the item destroyed since she promised to destroy it anyway upon receipt. I hope she did, but I have no way of knowing.
If you use My Kissing Hands, I’d insist on interacting with the staff or owner by email in case you have to prove anything. I had emails showing I had given all the correct information for the plaque by email the day of the impression. Of course, businesses are run by humans who can make mistakes, but then own them 100% and exemplify good customer service. She made a lot of excuses — getting the date wrong because of the Mothers Day rush (for a print made in early March with no deadline to complete?), having a new assistant unpack the plaques (without reading them?), ambiguity on the paper form (which she and her assistant filled out themselves while I held the baby at Lil Lamb Boutique), the tendency of dark colors to run (then why offer those formulations?), etc. The theme was blaming others or circumstances. She started out by blaming me for changing my mind, but I never changed my mind; I was always asking for the same thing stated in my day-​of-​appointment email.
She seemed to have a hard time accepting my criticism of the product and seemed to take it very personally rather than professionally as a business transaction gone wrong. In our email correspondence, she took the liberty of labeling me as «angry» at her (no, just dissatisfied with the inherently defective and incorrect product and not willing to pay return shipping under these circumstances), and at one point she said she was refusing to communicate further because she had offered me the only solutions she was willing to accept. At that point I realized this was not the professional kind of vendor usually hosted by Lil Lamb Boutique.