Creative Native Wedding Films Videographer

If I could leave less than 0 Stars I would. If I could safely leave my phone number here so I could personally warn every one who is considering hiring this person, I would. The only thing that saddens me more than what happened to me and my wife is the thought that it could happen to another couple, and I want to do everything I possibly can to make sure it never does. Do not hire this person.
Below, I will leave a link that will lead to a google folder that will show my interaction with this person, everything they said prior to the event, and how they handled the event, how they not only refused to even do the bare minimal to make it right but how they tried to get away with more. I will also leave a link to the court website and the case number so that you can look up my case against this person. In case there was any doubt that I may just be a customer with a bad experience, there is a whole court who sides with me in saying, this person owes me a full refund at the bare minimum!
To share briefly my experience (if you want the full elaboration, click the google link), we reached out to this person and had the prep meeting, where we learned about their packages that they offered and the add-ons. Fr om there, we made our choices, and requested specific shots. They enthusiastically said that we had made excellent choices and all said shots would be possible. After which, they then informed us that they had to charge us an additional $150 driving fee.
From there, no contact until the day of the wedding, when they then contacted us that they were going to be late! Despite this, I tried to be patient with this person (so long as they did a good job, I did not care). Being late for an event like this can be a considerably big deal as details of your big day can be very time sensitive!
From there, they seemed more interested in trying to shoot the town instead of the wedding, trying to leave the site at every opportunity (while I get that scenic shots can enhance your highlight film, if you are significantly late to the event, maybe you should stay on site to not miss any more potential important shots). More importantly, one of the big things we had chosen and was very important to us was the drone add-on. I don’t believe they even brought that equipment as I don’t recall ever seeing it and later on, they failed to produce any drone footage.
After the wedding, the only interaction we had with them was a brief exchange to let them know that the package they sent us was smashed. We didn’t hear from them until 11 weeks after the wedding (their site said we would hear from them within 10), and that was when I sent them an email wh ere again I was patient (once again, as long as we got our product I didn’t care, I just wanted them to do a good job). We had a bit of an exchange and then I didn’t hear fr om them until another 5 weeks later.
At 16 weeks, was when we got our highlight film (a full month late). At that point we were glad to have at least something, but honestly, it was not up to our standard and it didn’t have the one shot we had requested. Once again, I just remained patient as I just wanted them to do a good job with the ceremony video which they said they would send soon. Soon, turned out to be another month (which I’ve never heard a month to be a standard for ‘soon’)!
That probably would not had matter if they had actually sent the ceremony video. Honestly, if they had done the bare minimum, we might have given them a decent rating as we were at this point desperate to get what we had paid for. What they instead sent was a folder filled with raw footage, and they tried to pass it off that the ceremony video was somewhere inside. When we had pointed this out, on top of the fact that there was no media teasers, and there was no drone footage, they ghosted us for another two weeks and then tried to gas light us saying everything was in the google folder.
When they did finally place something new in the folder, they had placed was just all the raw footage spliced together in a single video. The camera was shaky, the audio was impossible to hear without blasting your speakers, and even after that, the video skipped out and was choppy. To elaborate a bit more, every speech except the mother of the groom speech was incomplete with the vows of the groom being completely cut out. The ceremony in our own ceremony video was missing (please, I’m begging you, don’t hire this person, the last thing I want is for this to happen to another couple).
To reiterate, we didn’t get this ‘product’ until 20+ weeks after the wedding. When we informed them that we still didn’t have our wedding ceremony, it was only then, when they informed us that apparently the card in their equipment was corrupted. To be clear, they claim to have a backup but this is a lie. From what I can tell, they define having a backup as having another hard drive that they later upload everything to. A real back up would be, having more than one card that you rely on when you are recording, or at the very least, having everything automatically, immediately being uploaded to a cloud. As they rely on a single card, which means that the average iphone user is more reliable than this person!!!
That being said, if you think a videographer who is late to your event and takes more than twice as long to deliver your product is hard, finding out that your event wasn’t even captured in the first place after that long, when they had been telling you that they had been working on it nonstop is even more devastating (I mean, if they had been working on it nonstop, how are they only now finding out that the data was corrupted, and if they knew, why are they only now telling us). Despite this, I tried to remain patient and personally looked up labs located in THEIR own city that could repair cards and hard drives to save corrupted data. What was even better, was that these labs would not had charged them if they had failed to get our data.
However, this person didn’t even bother to respond when I had sent them these addresses and such, and would continually provide excuses and whine about things they had been paid to do (if we pay you for a thing and you accept payment, you aren’t doing us a favor, you’re doing your job). At the end of the day, I didn’t want the money, I wanted the product I had paid for but that was impossible. When it was clear that we weren’t getting our product, they didn’t offer us a refund, they instead tried to steal more money from us, and refund a less than 12% of the total we had paid them.
This is simply insane. They had absolutely no empathy. When you mess up something this hard, the very least you can do is offer the people whose wedding event you’ve messed up a full refund (a refund doesn’t fix your mistake, it is just the only thing you can do). After back and forth, they tried to only refund us one third only after we threatened legal action.
Even this person admitted that we deserve a full refund despite not giving one to us. I realize now that when this person says something, they don’t mean what they say. Hopefully now, they realize that when I say something, I DO mean what I say. I brought them to small claims court and I won (which is a whole process in itself), so that others can see, it is not just me who believes that I deserve a full refund, it is a court of law that believes so. This was the shortest version, for the full actual experience, the google link will provide the whole email exchange between us as well as screen shots of the court verdict. To see wh ere this person is guilty, click the mycase link and use the Case Number to find it (or click the link below that takes you right to that page).
Please do not hire this person. Josh Smith is completely unprofessional!

Google Folder
Link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1U0WPULYrQSid34jcGfHVNO4pflzsKA5e?usp=drive_link

Court Info
Link:  https://mycase.in.gov
Case Number: 42D02-2409-SC-000214
Link Direct to the case: https://public.courts.in.gov/mycase/#/vw/CaseSummary/eyJ2Ijp7IkNhc2VUb2tlbiI6Il8xeDlJeGREX0dXYm1OWV9zSWJxVHBtSXpldWxuTTFtUnRIejVPRENuV1kxIn19