General Photographic Resources

The Portrait Cafe did some of the most beautiful pictures of my family that we have ever had taken when! The prices were very good... and honestlyI think their photography was like being at a private studio! Can't complain about anything...it was a fun experience and we got lots of pictures for a very good price. more

Information about name change filed with North Carolina by GPR to The Portrait Cafe. www.secretary.state.nc.us/corporations/Corp.aspx?PitemId=9535812 Please be careful and thorough in any transactions with this company. They've filed in FL as a Foreign Limited Liability Company. The name associated with this company, Paul Kimball, is associated with many smaller companies and is also the processor of the portraits and seller of the frames. more

General Photographic Resources is not longer in business ~ the owner passed away after a battle with cancer. The Portrait Cafe is not, I repeat, is not General Photographic Resources - GPR. I called them myself to get this info. Yes, some of their previous employees work for this company (it's a small town) - but The Portrait Cafe is a totally different company. I wish people would check out the real facts -BEFORE posting bad information. more

THEY HAVE NOW CHANGED THEIR NAME TO PORTRAIT CAFE...but it's still the same people running this scam of a business. If it was possible to give 0 stars, that's what I would have rated them. 1 star is too many. General Photographic (aka Portrait Cafe) was taking pictures for portrait packages at my son's daycare. We agreed to purchase a package for $184.21. We gave them our debit card information and over the next couple of weeks they debited our account seven different times for an amount of $238.78 cents - $54.57 over what we agreed to pay. Their guarantee was that the pictures would be delivered in 4-6 weeks. At this time it has been over 8 weeks and we have not received our pictures and The Portratit Cafe refuses to refund our money. They claim that General Photographic went out of business and it is not their problem. It is the SAME company using a different name, The Portrait Cafe, run by the SAME FAMILY. It was a father / daughter business, now an uncle has taken over and just changed the name - same equipment, same location. Horrible business. more

My sons day care decided to try out this company, the pictures came a great but the service is just unacceptable. First they where suppose to schedule appointments with individual parents, which they did not do, they just showed up at the day care. The representative of the company was not very friendly or engaging at all. I gave my check for the package that I picked on May 4, 2 days later I decided that I wanted to upgrade my package to the larger one so I informed the center director of that, which she passed the request on, from that moment on we have been told that someone will be contacting me so I can complete my upgrade, here we are June 2, 2010 and still no one from General Photographic Resources has contact me. Today I left a detailed message and will see if they finally decide to respond. For the money that we as parents pay for these pictures the service should be prompt and outstanding. Will I ever participate in using this company again? NO Will I ever recommend to any friends/family/co workers to use this company? NO Pros: Pictures came out nice. Cons: Customer Service is the lowest of lows! more

this company will not ever contact you. you never get a returned call even if you leave dozens of messages. they will not fufill there agreements with the schools. they wont even contact the school back after they get paid. there the kind of company who could care less about a customer after they get paid. they are the worst by far. i would never never use them again our town is upset. alot of good people got treated very badly an we r mad! Pros: there are no pros when it comes to this company Cons: alot of money low quality photos if you even recieve them more

When I read some of the comments here, I thought how screwed I was going to be when my pictures came in. One of the poses was not right; one of my kids had his yuk-face on. I knew I would not have picked that pose for the enlargements I bought. more

I was really angry when I opened my box of framed portraits and found one of the frames broken. I spent over $200 and waited 5 weeks, so, that plus having told both Grandmothers about how cute the pictures were, well, I was banging angry. I called the number on my receipt and was more frustrated that I could not reach a live person in Customer Service. Pros: Happy more

Whatever you do, avoid this company at all costs. They will drive you crazy calling you ""before"" you have your photos taken, then forget it, you will not be able to talk to them again. Our PTO used them for a fundraising project in Feb. and we were promised a corporate match on funds and a $150 sign on bonus. We haven't seen a dime, but they did quite well financially from our hard working families. You can't speak to a real person when you call customer service, only leave messages and no one will call you back. I wish that i had done more research before I subjected our parents to this deceptive company. They have 51 complaints with the Better Business Bureau, well now 52 if you add mine. This company is a joke! Pros: Nothing Cons: Everything about them. more

General Photographic Resources has the best customer service. My son's photographs were taken in October 2009 and came out great. At the beginning of January 2010, my apartment building burnt down and I lost everything. I called GPR to see if I could get copies of the photographs that I lost and they were able to print the whole package for me without any problems. The package was reprinted and sent to me in a timely manner. more

Our group scheduled a program with General Photographic Resource last Fall of 2009. We were all excited about the offer and sold over 83 gift cards throughout our little community. Pros: Keep up the good work guys more

We had this photo company come to our center in VA around November with promises of beautiful pictures, what a bad experience. We are use to dealing with picture companies however, this one should not be allowed to operate. Once the viewing date came the woman was rude and took too long and many parents walked out. The free pictures looked like they were printed off a home copy machine from the 1970's, very grainy with a muted color. We made no big deal about this because hey they were free! However, when parents recieved their overpriced photos they paid for which were also of a very low quality people were upset. I called for two weeks before any one spoke to me. Oh and she weaved a nice little lie that any family could call and they would make it right. They wanted families to give all their crappy photos back, every single one or their would be not refund. The knew they had us right there because the pictures came a few days before Xmas and since many parents did not take photos any where else they were expecting these for the holidays and even though they were disappointed they gave some out. So much deception, lies and bad business. I truly hope that everyone who crosses paths with this company turns them into the Better Business Burea so that something can be done about it. As a daycare director I was very embarrased about this event! It is very easy to turn them in, just do a search for the better business website, you can type in their name and it will come up and yes they already have many other complaints, I hate for anyone else to be in this situation! Would not give any stars but I had to do one, I wish I could give none!!! Cons: Poor picture quality, no customer service, overpriced more

I am the director of a childcare center in Cookeville, Tn and we used this company thinking the parents would be getting good quality professional pictures before Christmas...we were wrong. The representatives of this company were RUDE to me, parents, and other teachers. Many parents did not receive the pictures they purchased. They were WAY over priced for what we got. We cannot get in touch with anyone from the company to remedy this situation. We have left numerous messages and cannot get in touch with anyone... only recordings! So FRUSTRATING! We did not receive our framed portraits. The quality of the pictures were HORRIBLE! I would NEVER recommend this company to anyone! Even if they offered FREE pictures for everyone...they are an UNPROFESSIONAL company and do not know how to conduct themselves in a professional manner. If you are considering this company...take everyone's advice... DON""T DO IT! They are not worth the 1 star rating. Cons: EVERYTHING more

I am the Director at Imagination Station Daycare in WV. I have never dealt with a company like this before, and I will be calling the Better Business Bureau to report their business practices. The photographer was extremely rude..to parents as well as myself. He did end up apologizing to me but he embarrassed me in front of parents at our center. The company cancelled twice before finally making it to our center. To compensate, they offered all of our parents free Christmas cards. We were guaranteed Christmas delivery...the photos came on Dec. 22....three days before Christmas. Impossible to send out the Christmas cards! But the worst part is that many parents purchased specially framed portraits for Christmas gifts...none of the framed photos came in. There was a tiny note that read,""framed photos will follow in 7-10 days"". Unbelievable! I have so my unhappy parents, which reflects badly on me. We were also entitled to $5.00 for each package that was viewed by a parent...haven't heard anything about that yet. And by the way....you will NEVER,NEVER get through to a real, live person on their phone lines. Don't even bother leaving a message, they won't call back! Cons: Photographer, communication, etc. etc. more

I just received my PICTURE today. I bought a package as part of a fundraiser. I was supposed to receive an 8x10, 2 5x7s and 8 wallets, what came in the mail was an 8x10 only. The picture is of horrible quality, the faces are blury/distorted. I just tried calling the number listed in the yellow pages for General Photography Resources and it is a wrong number. After reading the other reviews on this site it doesn't surprise me. I would not recommend this company to anyone and will not use it again!! Pros: nothing Cons: bad picture quality more

From the beginning this company was nothing but a headache. They are impossible to get a hold of, take forever to call back, extremely disorganized, sloppy with their work..... My child had the flu the day of the viewing for the pics so I called the company. It took me days to reach them. When I finally did reach them, they told me they couldn't locate my child's pics unless I got the account number from the school and my child's sititng number. I managed to get the info even though I felt it was them who should have done the leg work for that. After giving them the info, it took a week for me to reach them again after hearing nothing back. They said they located my daughter's pics and would put it on their online gallery. I was given the website address and the password which they said would be my first name. It took me an hour to find the website because it was given to me WRONG. I double checked with the woman who gave it to me and she left out the ""dot"" that goes in the address. When I finally get the address right, i enter the password which is supposed to be my name....my name which she correctly spelled out for me online. Well, the password was spelt INCORRECTLY! Again I spent forever trying to intentionally mispell my name just to log in. When I finally did log in, and viewed the picture, IT WAS NOT MY CHILD!! It takes me yet another week to reach them again and when I do, I tell them that isn't my kid. They took ANOTHER 2 WEEKS and said they corrected it and put up her pic. I go back to the website and again, NOT MY KID!! I call them again, ask them to check what they're doing, verify everything, they said they changed it a 3rd time and so I go to the website, and can't log in! They changed the password! I give up, they are a terrible company, rude, unprofessional, sloppy work, no customer service...... I've told everyone I know.... never again. Pros: there are no pros.... Cons: EVERYTHING more

My experience with this company was horrible and I want something to happen. I like others who have posted reviews am a single MOM who just wanted some nice pictures of her kids. The pictures looked neat and I was supporting the RELAY 4 Life fundraiser so I purchased one. My mother died of cancer so I was doing something important while getting what I thought would be good pictures but I was in for it. I only get paid twice a month, and asked the rep who came in to make sure that money goes out on the days I was paid. He was like oh yea, it will. I juggle a job and two small children so I excepted that be honored. The payments came out first 9 days after it should have causing an overdraft, (before the end it had happen twice) So I contacted them, it took them 3 days to respond to my call and a week to respond to my email. The email was very unprofessional, words were misspelled and there was no type of capitalization or punctuation. I gave the the information requested and it took another week to respond, and by that point I had already contacted someone else. I finally was contacted today, and was RUDELY told it was my fault over and over again. This company is a complete rip off, the did not own up to anything. If the funds would have been pulled out on time, then I would have not had this problem. I had no time to make sure the payment came out I expected they honored what was agreed upon. All I got from it was it was my fault. I still have not received my pictures and have fellow co-workers who received pictures that were printed with the carpet from the floor showing instead of there sheet. This company is ridiculous, and if I don't get my pictures will go much further with this. I'm tired of companies like this taking advantage of the little people. DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY!!! Pros: The photgrapher was the only nice person I met Cons: Everything, customer service, the whole company more

When our family sat down to preview, and pay for the package, there were beautifully framed pictures on display. We asked if this is what we would be receiving with our payment and were told yes. When the photos arrived much to our displeasure the photo that was on display was placed in a much cheaper frame, with cardboard backing, and a warped plastic facing. This is what is commonly referred to as the Bait and Switch play. Additionally they misprinted the name on the photo which is ridiculous considering our phone number was on the receipt in the event of any confusion. I agree with some of the other posts as well in that the sales people were pushy, the packages were extremely over priced and over-all I would say the company is a rip off and a scam. I would never recommend using their services again to anyone. Cons: Did not deliver what they advertised! more

I am a Relay For Life team captain. When I was attending a Relay For Life meeting, we were told about the fundraiser that GPR was offering. So, I thought I would give it a try. This was the BEST and EASIEST fundraiser that I have ever done. Basically sold itself. more

Thank you so much for your courteous and professional service at the Eastern Shore Montessori School. The old fashioned monochrome style was perfect for the ""Treasure from the Attic"" theme. The added touch of color of certain objects stands out nicely and makes the photos look very well balanced. The '20's and 30's theme was also outstanding. we are very much enjoying sharing our photos and I am sure other student's families is doing the same. Pros: CUTE Pictures, personal & professional Staff, great experien more