23 November 2010

Our Ethical Pledge


That's it!  We're taking the pledge - after hearing and reading about pressure sales techniques designed to encourage very high sales we've decided to create The Photographer's Ethical Pledge.  If you're a photographer who works ethically, then get in touch and join the campaign to bring ethical business practices into our industry - if you're someone who purchases photography, get in touch and let us know what you think.  We'd love to hear from you.

Here’s the pledge:
  1. We pledge never to use pressure sales techniques - when we quote you a price that is all you need to spend. We will tell you what else you can buy from us if you want to buy more, but you will not be pressure sold anything.
  2. We will not encourage you in with competition wins, introductory offers or conning approaches geared to make you spend more.  At Zoë Photography we offer one product one price – for example, a makeover, photoshoot and a disk of around 40 images for just £300.  
  3. Any discounts offered, any promotions we do are all genuine offers, genuine promotions.  We do not expect you to buy more, we simply ask you to tell others about your experience of working with a photographer who has signed the ethical pledge.
  4. We will not ply you with alcohol to help you lower your guard.
  5. We supply usable images on disk with printing rights for you to enjoy - we do not overcharge for providing digital images and the only copyright marks are on web images for use on social networking sites.
  6. We want you to have a thoroughly enjoyable experience with Zoë Photography and City Girl Makeover Photoshoots, which means we will work hard to make sure that we deliver good customer service.
  7. If we get it wrong, please tell us, because let's face it, we are human, and we may get things wrong at times.  We will apologise to you without making excuses and we will work with you to put our mistakes right.
  8. We do not have a credit card machine and do not use credit agreements, because we only expect you to spend what you can afford to spend.
  9. We will openly help you and guide you - for example, if you are interested in becoming a model then we will provide you with realistic advice.  We will not tell you that you could make it as a model if it's unlikely.
  10. We aim to renew, reuse and recycle wherever we can, and will work to reduce our carbon footprint.
  11. We respect copyright and intellectual property of other businesses and artists.
  12. We follow distance selling regulations.
If you want to take The Photographer's Ethical Pledge then email zoe@zoephotography.co.uk

3 comments:

  1. Count us in... great post Zoe. We're with you all the way!!!

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  2. Thank you - send me an email if you wouldn't mind. Over time I'd like to be able to collect together the people who are ethical in their working practices - not sure what we will do after we've changed the world, maybe we need a party ;-)

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  3. Count me in too Zoe! I'm even going to post an Ethical pledge on my web site!

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