Double Take Studios Shuts Down - Doubletake Scams, Complaints, Reviews

On this page we will look at Double Take Studios prices. How much do they charge for photos, prices for postage costs and other charges as well as how much you will have to pay if you miss your booking. There are many complaints about Double Take Studios and people who claim the company are a scam, so this article looks at how much a day with Double Take will actually cost you. We have also just heard that the company has shut down so we will also bring news of the closure.

I recently visited Double Take Studios in Manchester, after reading all the complaints and negative reviews I wanted to see for myself exactly what they were all about. In this article I am concentrating on the prices that Double Take charge, if you want to read other reviews and about complaints and scams then you can check out my other write ups. So let’s talk about money.

It has just emerged that Double Take studios has ceased trading. This was first brought to public attention on 10 November 2011, as more details emerge we will update you. The company websites are all down and the phone lines are dead. The company have been in business for over ten years but the way they do bussiness has caused many complaints and consumer watchdogs have been hot on their case.

Where this leaves customers who have booked photoshoots or even worse paid for photos and not yet received them it is unknown. I personally visited two weeks ago and have not yet received the photos I bought. So it remains to be seen what will happen.

If you scroll down to the bottom of the page you will see various comments from people saying they have been contacted by a company and been offered all their photos on a CD with full rights to them. People seem to be paying anywhere from £20 to £40 for this. Well we had a call about six weeks ago from the same company, we paid £30 for all our session photos on a CD. There was a concern that this was a scam, but for £30 we decided it was worth the risk.

Yesterday I am happy to say our photos arrived. Every picture was there just as we had originally seen at the studio. They even included the fancy ones they had touched up and enhanced. We now have the rights to these photos and can do what we like with them. So they can go on to social media, be printed out or altered in any way we see fit.

So if you get a call from an archive company offering you all your photos on CD, then take this opportunity. I genuinely feel for the people who may have paid thousands of pounds for the exact same CD whereas you can now get the same thing for £30.

So after you have had your so called free makeover and photo shoot how much will the pictures cost you. Well we were guided into our own private little viewing room to see our pictures. The sales person was very friendly and pleasant, he left us alone to see our pictures on a big plasma screen TV. Then he came back in to talk money. It was at this point that I realised how much of a scam Double Take Studios can be. We had 52 pictures taken altogether. To get all 52 of these photos on a CD and each one printed on a standard piece of A4 photograph paper would cost us a staggering £3299.

Obviously that is not something that many people can afford. We didn’t want to spend more than £100 or so, so what could we get for that? Well for one picture on a CD it would cost us £120. That would give us the copyright to the picture and we could then print it, publish it or whatever. If we wanted an A4 print of a picture that would be £90, however, this did not included the rights and we would not be allowed to reprint it, put it online or share it with anyone.

For a print out of all 50 of our photos in thumbnail size, they would charge us £50. For airbrushing it would cost £30 per photograph. There were a few nice montage pictures they knocked up, these would be an extra £50 each. They do offer various package deals which bring the price down slightly, but the cheapest of these is £399 and only includes 6 images on CD. As you can see, the Double Take Studio prices are very expensive indeed.

This is where the company get the most complaints. They say you are getting a free makeover, however, if you don’t turn up on the day they charge you £125 per person. If you cancel a week in advance it will cost you £50. They ask for a small booking fee when you sign up and this gives them the opportunity to get your card details, so then if you don’t turn up you can’t stop them taking the payment to cover the no show fee.

Another cost that should be mentioned is postage. We bought an image on CD and a print, the print was given to us there and then but the CD would have to be posted to us for some reason. To my disgust, this would cost £8! After all the shocking prices they charge you they have the cheek to make you pay £8 for the postage cost of a CD. Very poor customer service if you ask me.

As you can see if you want to go to Double Take Studios and come away with some nice pictures then it is really going to cost you big time. The prices and charges are simply madness and to be honest the quality of the pictures is nothing all that special anyway. You can go and get a free day out of this if you are very strong willed, but if you don’t show up it will cost you a lot of money. This company is technically not a scam but you can see why there are so many complaints about Double Take Studios.