Photo rip off?

Hi all,

 This is my first time on a forum, but have really just got into running.

On Sunday 13th April I completed the Flora London Marathon. I loved it! The whole day, the support, the crowds, the organisation...everything was fantastic. I even finished well under my 5hour target at 4hours 42mins.

I was looking at the website www.marathonfoto.com for my pictures and happily found them. I wanted to order the CD at a pricey £59.95 but thought I'd bite the bullet. However, when it came to the shipping cost of £7.95 I was shocked. It would cost a maximum of 45p to post a CD, so this seems like an outrageous example of profiteering!! Am I just being tight, or do I have a valid point?

Anyway, does anyone have a voucher code for the website for a discount or free shipping?

Congratulations to everyone that braved the wind, rain and hail on Sunday and see you all next year!!

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Comments

  • WilkieWilkie ✭✭✭
    I'd be more outraged at 60 quid for a CD!  That's just ridiculous (and so's the postage).
  • Hadnt read this when I started a new thread. Marathonfoto's profit margins must be incredible.
  • Thanks, you think £60 for the CD is an outrage...I won't mention the cost of actually ordering the printed photos....image

  • I bought a couple of photos as email downloads from the Rome marathon. 5 euro each, total about 8 quid. FLM really sounds a rip-off! With Rome you can also watch yourself on video crossing the timing mats every 5k or so for free too.
  • WilkieWilkie ✭✭✭

    I know what the photos cost - that's why I didn't buy any.

    Amsterdam mara photos are free to download.

  • dy the dvd of alex instead and maybe take a still!
  • Just ordered the DVD from Alex, thanks for the advice!!!!

     I urge you all to email marathonfoto to voice your disgust at their prices, if we don't let them know, they'll never change! mfserviceuk@marathonfoto.com This is thier UK customer service email address!!

  • Why not just right click your photo from marathon foto .com and save to your own PC then it is free. Ok so you may want one for the frame so just buy one. Then go to Welsh Alex's thread and get one that is far better value. 
  • I bought a photo last year & to be honest the quality was crap, complete overpriced rip off. Don't know if they've improved their backdrop this year but last year they were awful.it's their second year & they're still rubbish.
  • It is over priced, massively!

    I did New York last year, I got all my photos downloaded from a similar service, for about £50. I thought that was ok, as you did get all of them. It costs £34.95 from Marathonfoto to download one photo. I think thats a rip off.

    I suppose they do have a lot of costs, with all their camera equipment out on the course etc...but £60 for a disc is a bit much. Not great!

    Shocking!

  • In the good old days they used to post them out and id just keep all the photo's without paying.  When they rang up I always suggested they could come round and collect them if they wanted them back.

    If they wern't charging something like £20 per pic id of probably bought a few!

  • I've been running races for about 6 years, and have never bought a photo.

     Which is a great shame,a s I'd love to have pictures from all those races. But I just won't pay £10 or £20 for a digital snap.

    The crazy thing is that they have something I want, and it's something that is of no use whatever to them if I don't buy it. I would happily pay £2 for each photo which would give them a handsome profit, and give me a nice memento. But as things stand, we both lose out.

  • I agree that these photo places rip ya off... I honestly think they have priced themselves way too high, yeah they might make some sales and turn a nice profit, but have they ever trialled a much lower price and seen the uptake from that.  It's simple economics really and they just seem to be pricing themselves out of sales.  Great idea from Welsh Alex too!  Might have to go find 10 quid now.
  • well, we all agree then, what a bloody rip-off. A real shame, as the rest of the event is very good value for money i think.

    What a  crazy situation!  If the photo's were reasonable value for money, they would sell two or times as many (at least), and make more profit, and we wouldn't all feel that despite months of sacrifice and training, plus in most cases raising money for charity, that in the end, we were just conned  because we wanted a record of our efforts!

    Who's fault is it though?  Is it the greed of the photography company, or the greed of those wanting such a high fee for doing the photography?

  •  I have a copy of the Finishers Certificate from MF as above i agree the charges are a little steep - £4 + Post, but wanted some pics as i had no family there. I Have an original version that you get when you make a purchase that i can amend to suit your needs. 

    If anyone is Interested I can Make up & send to you via Email for you to print off Or i will print & Laminate & Post the Finishers Certificate With your Details on for £1 Donation to my Charity Page.

    If your interested go www.justgiving.com/matthewwade & leave me a further message with details etc Surname & Race Number.

    I know the companies need to make money, but so do the Charities involved.

  • Another suggestion for Londoners, is to put the same gear on you wore on the day and go out for a run in it to get hot and sweaty.  Then finish off down the Mall and get someone to take decent picture of you.  Who's going to know the difference? image

  • Scott great idea image

    I'm in agreement with rest of this forum.  Prices are outrageous.  Rather than emailing the company though why not email the organisors?  I'm not sure how many years marathonfoto's contract is, but if enough people complain maybe London Marathon will do something about it.

  • James

    Agree wholehartedly. The FLM is owned by the FLM commitee who hire these leeches profiteering off people emotions.

    FLM could EASILY write in the contract for marathon Photo a maximum amount they can charge for their photos. Even if you had 5 photos and the price was regulated at a maximum £20 they would still make a MASSIVE profit. What we do not know is how much FLM charge marathon photo to get the contract

  • I bought the Memory Cd but sent additional comments speaking of my disguest at the prices..
  • Yup its a rip off but 90% of the people will still buy the photos.

    They could probably only sell 2 photos to 10% of the runners anmd make a massive profit

    Its a rip off so dont buy them - simple. If no one bought them then they would lower prices but as everyting in Britain everyone moans no one does anything to stop it.

  • GladragsGladrags ✭✭✭

    the fact that this is the 2008 thread speaks volumes....

    yes the prices are crazy, but people pay, so they haven't changed their pricing this year and probably won't ever - regardless of what we say or do!

  • FreemersFreemers ✭✭✭
    The company is based in the US so I guess they are shiupping from there....which is just ridiculous...surely FLM people can find a good UK based company to do photos for a UK event!
  • They'd be stupid to ship from the States - it could easily be done from here.

    I've never bought a race photo from the Marathon though - so it could be that they take so many thousands of photos - I think theres about 10 of me - so thats what 350,0000 pics and sell about 10,000 ?

    Maybe less ?
  • It has to be  a large company to do it, and there aren't that many large UK races to make the money from. To photo a race like London you need massive infrastructure compared to most local races. You need to contract in loads of photographers. All of whom might have £2000-£5000 of kit they want a return on and some pay. You need a large number of staff to turn around the photos in a very short space of time - every photo will individually be identified to the runner, normally mostly manually. You need massive servers to hold all the photos and a very fast internet connection to allow people to view them all. This isn't done from a home broadband internet connection. Then you need a number of skilled computer programmers to actually write the software for the web site, graphic designers to make sure it looks good. This is not a one man band. Far Far far from it. I'm sure they do make quite a nice profit, and personally I think the prices are higher than I would charge, but some of the figures people are quoting are just mad. Really just mad.

    One of the major beefs I would have is if the quality of the photo isn't up to much, e.g. out of focus, badly cropped or  balanced in terms of colour/brightness. A lot of that will depend on the contract photographer and if they do any work on them afterwards. This can be really time consuming - checking every photo is reasonable and possibly working on it. 

    They will ship from the UK, not the US, they will possibly contract out the printing and delivery of the prints to a UK setup, or may even have their own.

    Then some people will never buy photos as cougie says. People seem to be buying fewer now compared to three years ago.  A typical UK race of 500-600 people might have 2-3% upto perhaps 5% of people buying photos. For the marathon I wouldn't expect that to be more than 20%, probably much less.

  • GladragsGladrags ✭✭✭

    def ship from the UK - was a Liverpool postmark last time i think?

    on the qualitry of the photos - you can crop them yourself when you order - works fine.

    I think the uptake for FLM will be much higher - every first timer would want a photo? And even saddoes like me (4 FLMs now) still want a memento?

  • I wanted 2 photos of myself and my husband as it was his first london, but when it came to £5.95 for postage, that was the final straw.  Cancelled my order and emailed them exactly what I thought of their charge.

    It will make no difference because people still buy them but there was no way I was going to be robbed of my hard earned money.

  • Gladrags,

    It's more if your legs are missing  (from the photo) you can't recover from that.  All the runners I know hardly ever buy photos. I bought them the first year, but a lot of London runners are repeat offenders in terms of doing the race, and going from the experience of what they do I guesstimated. The regular race take up comes from experience.

    Runnersbeen,

    £6 does seem like a lot when the photos are already expensive. For £6 from Amazon you get next day delivery for a book, how do you feel that compares? At least there you can opt for supersaver free delivery or 1st class post for less. Would you have paid £3 more per photo is p&p had been free? I often wonder what I think is reasonable for PnP. For a 10x8 photo it costs me just over £2 to send it in a board-backed envelope first class.

  • Gladrags - I've done 8 FLMS and never bought a photo yet.

    Probably not the photographers fault - I think its down to me cos I always look so bloody awful on them !
  • I think considering the price of the photographs the postage should have been free or at most £2.00
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