Harlan Cone review: Terrible photographer 11

I got married on February 22, 2009. Harlan Cone was recommended to me. I called him and he had what appeared at the time to be great prices. He seemed to be a nice guy. Yeah right! We made payment arrangements to pay him for photographing and making a video at my wedding. On the days that we were suppose to pay him he would call me first thing in the morning. That was ok with me cause we made arrangements to pay him on that day. He received all him money before the wedding. He showed up to the wedding and was very demanding of that kind of pictures he wanted to take. I couldnt get afford to get mad on the happiest day of my life so I let that go. After the wedding we went on with our life. When it came time for Harlan to deliver our proofs we can never seem to get ahold of him. In our contract it says we will have them in 3 to 6 weeks. Today is 6 weeks to the day. Between 3 weeks and now he has never returned our calls. I am furious. Brides beware. Dont use this guy. It is one excuse after another. Now his father is in the hospital supposably. I am taking my husband and my father in law with me to his house tonight and all the other reports that this website has on him. This guy has terrible customer service. I dont even know what the pictures look like yet. Please do not use this guy ladies. I dont want to see anymore people go thru what I am going thru.

I recently used Frederick Cone as a videographer for my wedding, , , biggest mistake I made during my planning. Frederic may offer you a great price but even after paying minimal you will still feel shorted after receiving the final product. He did the videography for my wedding and it was terrible. He dressed unprofessionally, he cut off our heads during the majority of the filming, he didn’t use professional equipment, just a handheld camcorder... my uncle did a better job filming my wedding than Frederic. His cell phone started ringing during the middle of our ceremony! He was not reliable before hand, cancelled every meeting we arranged. I was surprised he even showed up on my wedding day.The DVD wasn't labeled and came in a clear CD case. For paying what I paid I expected a little more than what I received. I did not have high expectations what so ever and I was still extremely dissappointed with my final product. He is not worth saving a few dollars.I have posted several reviews on numerous sites and since then he has either taken himself off the site so no one can read them or disputed my reviews. He even submitted an altered contract that I did not sign nor did it have the same verbiage as the contract I signed to render my review false and I was forced to take it down.

I recently had a meeting with "Fredrick" to go over everything that he can do for my wedding. Everything he said sounded great to my fiance and myself, but after telling our parents about SWP Weddings, they told me to do my research and look at the BBB. I am so glade I did, I have to read anything good from 6 different sites. It took me awhile to find anything on his company until i found out what SWP stood for. He has been calling every day asking about when we will make our first deposit and how much it will be and if we could be all upfront he would throw in an extra upgrade for us to say thanks. We did sign a contract before I did my research and I have not paid him anything yet. I am going to be calling him to let him know that we are no longer using his company or maybe just tell him I found out your a fraud and I dont want the happiest day of my life being ruined by a ### like you.

Dear Victims Of Harlan Cone,

Please contact me at technicoloring@yahoo.com - I am currently attempting to gather all past victims of Harlan Cone to bring a case against him.

Please leave me your name and a contact number, and I will fill you in on my plans. We must bring this fraud down!

Harlen Cone is unprofessional, perverted, and gives life ruining advice to people he doesn't even know. My life is in shambles because of this uneducated, and unprofessional opinions and ideas for my life. He took advantage of me and didn't have my best interest. I would like to make him pay for all the damage he has caused in my life and others.

I would have to agree with everyone on this page. My wife and I got married march 13th 2011. SHe had to have a viodeographer so last minute we got a phone call from Frederick AKA Harlan Cone. I have experienced the same ### everyone else on this page has experienced. We gave him $500 up front just to video tape our wedding. @ months after we got our first disc the "raw footage" of our wedding and what do you know ###ing BLANK... I am suposed to meet him today to pick up the edited version of the wedding. My expectations are low being that its been almost 4 months. We are going to sue him. We are pissed. If anyone would like to call me or email me heres the info. Armednincharge@cox.net or RYAN [protected].. Yeah what the ### up with this guy.

I have a contract with him for this summer. What can I do to stop from using him and get our money back? Please help!

This guy is a natural disaster, you are better off taking your own pictures at your wedding if you need to save money . This guy should be barred from doing anything with the public let alone a wedding.. He is utterly unprofessional which is obvious from the second you meet him. Give it up Frederick/Harlon whoever the hell you are, you suck, and please stop ruining people's weddings. Have some integrity for gods sake!

Harlan Cone-AKA Fredrick with Senational Wedding photographers.
I am completely and utterly dissatisfied with this company. I used them for my wedding, while they were reasonably prices...I got exactly what I paid for...too much of nothing.

Although it looked as if I got thousands of pictures, what it was in reality was maybe a couple hundred with everyone else’s face cut to resemble multiple pi...ctures. My package consisted of photography and 4 or 5 hours of video, what I received was a 42 minute video that didn't even include our vows! OUR VOWS WERE CUT OFF! The first dance was cut off even the groom's dance with his mom was cut off. According to Fredrick he was making edits to our video that took way longer then his contracted time allowed. I wish we had the unedited version; it had to be better than what I received.

Needless to say we had to get an attorney...but in the end we got screwed with pictures of "faces" and video with HORRIBLE quality and pieces of the actual wedding.

If you want cheap, use them...but if you want quality please look elsewhere...definitely not worth the hassle, heartache or the money.

From one bride to another don't bother with Sensational Wedding Photography

I had this problem with him and his dad as the supposed videographer & photographer for my wedding in February of 2007. He broke EVERY part of the contract. After showing up to the wedding (in his 80's rock band t-shirt, mind you), he finally got my checklist of pics to make sure are taken. He proceeded to fold it up and put it in his pocket, without even looking at it. From there he went on to do his "job" and tried taking pictures of me, my husband, and our child (that doesn't exist because we have no kids). He was so unorganized, it was ridiculous. One of the main pics I wanted to get was with me and my husband at sunset. In order to get that pic, we had to track him down. We found him and his dad not where you'd think- out taking pics of the guests, etc. Nope, they were kicked back in the front area of the clubhouse, with their feet up on the couch and their multiple buffet dinner plates. Had to drag him away to take the sunset pic (which sucked by the way) and he was acting all put out. We talked about angles & pics we DID not want, and ones we HAD to have. He gave more of the stuff we didn't want, than the ones we did want. We ended up with tons of poses that we specifically said we didn't want. And the pictures were awful, and I can say with absolute certainty that ANYONE at my wedding could have done a better job and taken them to Walgreens, just like he did. I didn't know that professional photographers take their photos to Walgreens. But, his professionalism and raport with Walgreens must be great because they gave him extra photos, which he proceeded to give to me 'cause he didn't check the pics before he gave them to us. So, we were lucky and got a pack of pics from another wedding. Of course, we returned expecting to get the rest of ours, and instead got told that he didn't have any more and if those weren't our pics he doesn't know what to tell me. The video is a whole different, but equally crappy story. He didn't get the ceremony in full, nor did he get all of the important things, like the anniversary dance & afterwards when my grandparents (married the longest) gave us words of wisdom. He didn't get all of the perfomances. When the toasts were being given, he didn't light properly and so all you can hear is my dad's voice and see a black figure infront of the window. Half the time of the video, he just set it up next to the dance floor and walked away. He didn't hold it and make sure to catch the moments meant for video. When we finally got the video it was a mess, he hadn't edited it or added music or words, nothing. Again, anyone at my wedding could have done a better job. Pictures weren't cropped properly or at all, they weren't edited to fix lighting or red-eye, nothing. So, coming to the contract breaking part...We had a scheduled time for the photographer and videographer, which were not the same. The "dad" was the videographer and came with Harlan to do the photographs. He was there before the wedding to get some pics out of the way. However, the videographer wasn't needed until the ceremony started. So a few hours later, during the reception, the dad takes off. Harlan says it's fine and he can still do the video and that we were already at the number of pics, so it wouldn't be taking away from his photographer duty. I argued a bit, saying that the photographer's time wasn't up yet, regardless of how many pics were taken. But, apparently, according to Harlan Cone, when a number of pics is agreed upon as the pics you will get, that number is the same number of pics that will be taken. He says that's the way it is in "the business, " which I know is not true. So, you can guess that many of the pics were crappy because it usually takes a few of the same pic to get a good one. And then as Harlan took over his videographer duties, he again did a [censor] job just set his camera up in a corner and missed important things. And after doing all of this, he proceeded to let me know that he was leaving and that he was pretty much out of film. I argued there and told him that he was breaking contract. That he was leaving 2 hours early and it wasn't ok. He basically said, oh well and that he was still leaving. Now, this makes him breaking the contract because he was not there as the photographer or videographer until the scheduled time. He could have been taking video of the guests, giving us their advice and well wishes. He missed our grand exit, with sparklers and all our family and friends. Broken contract again because we were given our pictures after the scheduled date. But, according to Harlan, "in the business" they only count M-F as their days, weekends are not included in the time they are given to get your pictures to you. Funny thing was, that even if that were the case (which it wasn't, because the contract didn't specify weekdays only, as a professional one would have) we still got our pictures later than promised. It went from being a week or so, on my calculating, to only a few days, according to the way they do it "in the busines." Third broken contract happened when we were promised a certain number of pictures and were given 75 less than that. This led us to turn down another part of our photo deal, which was to choose 5 pics to get enlarged. After waiting so long to get the pics and disc to begin with, we didn't want to have anything more to do with him. After all of this, I came to find out that he has had some issues with BBB and that he even has legal issues with the state because of some bad work he did for them. He has multiple company names that all do the same thing. I think he just changes the name when stuff starts to go down, like bad comments being spread, etc.. I don't bother telling anyone not to use a certain company 'cause I have no idea what name he's using now. But, I do tell them to AVOID HARLAN CONE. HE LIVES OFF OF 71st AVENUE AND CACTUS IN PEORIA, and usually has future clients meet him there to go over contracts and pictures. He's a little greasy man that you want nothing to do with. Don't get suckered in by the price...you will get what you pay for...he's not a quality person, so you won't get quality photos or videos. There aren't many things I wish I could turn back time for, but...I think I would turn back time to when we met Harlan (who I thought was a woman on the phone, mind you) and tell him/her that we weren't interested. Even after he pushes us to sign the contract so we aren't wasting his time, still wouldn't do it. Might give him a swift kick in the @ss before we left, but that's about all he'd be getting from us. Hiring him was the biggest mistake I ever made and he literally ruined the most important day of my life. I can see that there are other people since 2007 that have made the same mistake as I did, meeting Harlan Cone and letting him do anything for them. I hope that people can look up his name online and see that he is far from what you want to take your pictures or video...between all of the complaint boards (which I was not lucky enough to know about in time), and the BBB...it is possible to make the right decision... JUST SAY NO TO HARLAN CONE!

oh join the crowd enter his name in this sight and you will see about a dozen of us, at least you got your pics. he has ripped off thousands of dollars from people, he is low life and ###, when he seen my post on this he called us, a year and a half after our wedding and threatened us to take this off, he said it was our fault that we never came and got them! ha ha he wishes! so i guess we all know he is a liar, i am acually beggining to think he might be a little mental to believe his own lies!
took him to small claims court so now he owes us our money back, but its hard when you live in a different city. so what to do?