The Fabulous Photo Booth

While searching for a photo booth for our upcoming wedding, we came about The Fabulous Photo Booth. We inquired about the price and found out it was going to be $ 600 for three hours, which was understandable. Not wanting to pay that much for the service we negotiated with the owner, Ben Bigelow and agreed to a trade for the photo booth: three hours of service at our wedding in exchange for a hot air balloon ride. Ben agreed to the trade due to the fact that he said he likely wouldn’t receive any other offers in the two week window before our event and we continued to discuss the details. Several emails were exchanged where he laid out every detail of what would be covered; including the fact that we didn’t need to sign anything and we would only need to tip the photo booth attendant on site.
The next day Ben sent an email that stated:
«Here’s the deal. sure enough, when I commit to you, I get an high paying event for the same night that wants to book, and I have only one booth left. I know we agreed, verbally, but I really need to take that event. I didn’t expect to get another lead for that night. I’m going to have to cancel.
I would, however, setup you up, that week, with a laptop, backdrop, camera, and small printer for $ 175 cash. You just set those on a hightop table, around 6 feet from your backdrop (against a wall), and press the space bar and it will lead guests through a series of 4 pictures, and then print out with your logo on them. It’s super fun! The pics will look great and you won’t regret it. Would that work for you?»
After receiving the email from Ben I called him to question what he considered an agreement as he had already agreed to provide the service to us. I was also a bit troubled by the fact that instead of just offering the lesser version of his services for free to make up for his lack of judgment in how he was doing business, that he was actually going to charge us more than even initially agreed upon for said services. He stumbled over every word in his response and ultimately said that the reason he’s doing it is because he has child support that he needs to cover.
He didn’t like the fact that instead of simply rolling over and letting him cancel after coming to an agreement with us that I had the audacity to call and actually question his actions. He became very defensive and said he can’t make money by offering things for trade. So I’m not sure why he would even agree to it to begin with. The final straw in his unsuccessful attempt to run a business with integrity came when he said that he actually did have another photo booth that he could offer to us, but decided that he wasn’t going to do it because he didn’t like my approach in talking to him to try to get answers to the many questions he left. He straight up lied in his email response to us about not having another booth available. The conversation ended with Ben hanging up mid-​conversation as he lacked the ability to properly communicate his decision in a logical way.
All-​in-​all it resulted in a poorly handled situation by Ben that shows that this is not an effectively run business that you should pursue the services of.