Ethics and legality
1. Contact information
For the short of it:
If you ever encounter any troubles or are dissatisfied with any of our products or services, please contact us to let us know, we will be happy to help and your feedback (both positive and negative) is important to us. We are humans, it is possible that we make a mistake or that something does not turn how we wanted it to, but, at Waterpixies, if you let us know we made a mistake or are unhappy about something, we will do something about it and try to best address your concern.
For the long version, see below:
2. How it works/ privacy/personally identifiable information policies
Swim school photography:
We partner with your pool, your swim school owner/manager invites us to offer you our service in the space they manage.
We come for a full 'photo week'. We take photos whenever there are lessons running. We provide them our public liability insurance as well as our staff's Working With Children Check (WWCC).
We have two different workflows to best fit the needs of private pools and public pools. We may adapt each slightly, hand in hand with the poll owner/manager, depending on the specifics of each pool.
PLEASE NOTE: If your child does not want to have photos taken, we will not force it. We can take photos of them above water too if they are lacking confidence or skills for underwater photos.
1) Private swim schools: let us know if you do not wish to have photos taken.
a. We receive a list of the number of children, names of the children taking lessons each day as well as email addresses of parents.
b. We set up our 'studio' next to the lesson and borrow each child separately for 1-3min in order not to disrupt the class.
If you do not wish to have photos taken, simply let us know (again, if your child does not want photos taken, we will not force it).
Parents' whose children were not present or wished not to have photos taken will not receive an email and their email addresses will not be added to the WaterPixies client database.
As photos are taken, you become a 'current customer', your email address is added to our database so that we can communicate your login details to you.
We use third party applications to manage this data (e.g. Mailchimp, our online gallery system, etc.) but other than that, we keep that information to ourselves.
c. The session is free, there is no obligation to buy at any point. Only you, the photographer and the pool manager get to see the photos, they are not publicly available, no one else sees them unless you grant explicit permission to do this.
The swim school receives access to all photos once the galleries are archived. Neither the swim school nor Waterpixies will share any of these photos publicly unless you have given your explicit agreement.
e. You receive an email with your login details to your personal password-protected gallery within one week of the day of the photo shoot.
f. You view your photos, pick and choose the ones you like in the format you'd like (digital files, prints of various sizes, ice blocks, aluminium prints, etc). Prints begin at $12, digital files begin at $15, there is a $15 minimum spend limit to cover the admin and handling costs of each order.
g. If you order digital files, you receive them directly after your purchase by email. If you order prints, they are posted directly to your street address within 10 business days (usually faster).
h. Galleries will be online for two weeks. They are then taken offline (archived). We ask for a $20 fee if you wish to access your gallery after the archiving date.
We delete photographs after 6 months unless you have given your consent to use them for promotional use.
i. We may be sending occasional emails about what we are up to if we feel feel it might interest you. You will be able to unsubscribe from these emails at any time.
2) Public swim schools: you come to us.
a. Come to our photo booth designated area (you'll see our banners) before, during or after your lesson, give us your child(ren)'s name(s) and email address.
We use your personal information to communicate with you (let you know when your photos are ready and how to access them).
We use third party applications to manage this data (e.g. Mailchimp, our online gallery system, etc.) but other than that, we keep that information to ourselves.
The swim school receives access to all photos once the galleries are archived. Neither the swim school nor Waterpixies will share any of these photos publicly unless you have given your explicit agreement.
b. The photo sessions takes 1-3min per child, we can also do sibling photos.
c. The session is free, there is no obligation to buy at any point. Only you, the photographer and the pool manager get to see the photos, they are not publicly available, no one else sees them unless you grant explicit permission to do this.
d. You receive an email with your login details to your personal password-protected gallery within one week of the day of the photo shoot.
e. You view your photos, pick and choose the ones you like in the format you'd like (digital files, prints of various sizes, ice blocks, aluminium prints, etc). Prints begin at $12, digital files begin at $15, there is a $15 minimum spend limit to cover the admin and handling costs of each order.
f. If you order digital files, you receive them directly after your purchase by email. If you order prints, they are posted directly to your street address within 10 business days (usually faster).
g. Galleries are online for two weeks. They are then taken offline (archived). We ask for a $20 fee if you wish to make orders after the archiving date. We delete photographs after 6 months unless you have given your consent to use them for promotional use.
h. We may be sending occasional emails about what we are up to if we feel feel it might interest you. You will be able to unsubscribe from these emails at any time.
3. Refund or cancellation policies
PHYSICAL AND DIGITAL GOODS:
We will refund any faulty product and address any problems in our services either through a financial refund or by improving the service.
For physical goods, please send the item(s) back to us (address above) and/or send us a photo of it, let us know what the problem is and how you wish to proceed. We will either print a new photograph(s) and send it back to you or refund the full value of the item(s).
If it is a faulty digital file, please reach out and we will do what we can to help. If we cannot resolve the issue, we will refund the full value of the file.
PAID PHOTO SESSION:
If you are unsatisfied with a photo session you paid for, we are willing to explore the solutions at hand with you. Some of these options include, re-running a session at a discounted rate, running a new session at no extra cost, refunding part or the entirety of the service depending on the situation.
We do not generally allow cancellations as they tend to produce administrative difficulties and generate waste when the order has been partly processed. However we can conceive of situations that warrant a cancellation, so please feel free to reach out to let us know what the problem is and we will see what we can do to help.
We require you to cancel a booked photo-session at least 24h before the time of the session. You may either reschedule or ask for a refund.
CUSTOMER SERVICE:
If you are dissatisfied with our free service (free photo sessions), please feel free to reach out and let us know about it. There may be ways in which we can address your particular concerns and/or improve our service in the future.
We always seek to improve where we can, your feedback is the most important source of information to do this.
You may also reach out to your pool if there is anything you feel they should know about. Our Service works best with a genuine partnership with pools, it is therefore important for them and for us to know if there is anything you feel we should know about.
4. Delivery time frames
We try to make all photo sessions (free and paid) available online within a week of your photo session. However, it is possible that we face problems out of our control which could slow the delivery time frame. We ask you for your understanding.
Once your images are available and you put in your order through, your digital files will be made available to you directly after your purchase. We aim to get physical goods to you within 10 business days, however some of these depend on third parties we have no control over, so it may occasionally take a little longer.
We are here to help.
Blue skies,
WP.