Want to know what the biggest scam out there is? Mall portrait studios.
Now, before you start in with a

, please know that I am wholly against taking my child for these types of sittings (no offense to those of you who like doing this).
My MIL takes my nephew once a month (and takes full advantage of the backdrops and props) and when my daughter was born, she gave us a gift card to JC Penney Portrait Studio. I've fought it until now, but I want to give both sets of grandparents a framed "professional" photo of her for Christmas, so yesterday I had Romo take her in to get some photos taken. Told him to inquire about getting a CD with the photos so that I could possibly get a Christmas card out.
He called and said that she did really well, and that they got something like 50 really great pictures of her. And, for them to put those pictures on a CD, it would be $150.00
$150.00. My blood just boiled - they took the pictures with a digital camera so it's as simple as drag and drop, no? Okay, I know it's not that simple, but still. Their next lowest package was something like picking out our 3 favorite pictures and getting those on a CD along with a couple of 8x10s and 5x7s - for the bargain price of $79.99.
Anyway, I did some Googling and found a $25 Groupon that got me the sitting fee ($9 per person), the two photo sheets (the 5 x 7s will take care of the framed grandparent photos) and our three favorite photos on CD. And, I have access to
all of the photos via their online portal so I'm just going to print screen/crop all the photos.
Just such a racket. I could have hired a friend to come to our house for $50 but I thought surely going through JC Penney I would be saving $$$.