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Bad wedding videographers slapped with $110K fines

A NSW Central Coast wedding videographer couple has been ordered to pay $110,000 in compensation, costs and fines for failing to deliver 17 clients their wedding videos and photos.

Katie and Andrew Klerck (left). Source: ACA.

Between April 2016 and January 2019, 17 clients paid a total of $32,730 to Katie and Andrew Klerck, trading as Switch Multimedia.

Switch Multimedia then failed to deliver the finished product to their clients, with some couples not receiving any video edits while others were handed extremely poor quality video snippets.

In 2018 A Current Affair (ACA) ran a segment on a different Central Coast wedding photographer who ran off with clients money, and Switch Multimedia was mentioned as another dodgy wedding vendor. They approached Katie Klerck at her home, who said ‘this is not something we’ve done on purpose. This is not something we’ve set out to do. We’re not trying to hide from anybody’.

ACA ran another segment last week dedicated to the Klercks.

‘I did a lot of ‘do it yourself’. I got a second hand wedding dress from Gumtree and sacrificed on a brand new one. And for the photography and video we spent $2800. It was definitely a big chunk out of our wedding budget,’ said upset Switch Multimedia client, Amelja Dobson, to ACA about her wedding from three years ago. They still haven’t received anything.

NSW Fair Trading undertook an investigation into the couple resulting in a total of 33 charges under the Australian Consumer Law, 17 relating to Katie Klerck and 16 relating to Andrew Klerck.

On March 5, 2021, following an earlier plea of guilty to all charges, both were convicted of the charges by the Parramatta Local Court. Katie was fined a total of $27,200 and ordered to pay total costs of $16,671.90; while Andrew Klerck was fined a total of $25,600, ordered to pay compensation of $25,470 and costs of $15,836.40.

executive director of Investigations & Enforcement for the Better Regulation Division Valerie Griswold said the issue of sentimentality made these crimes all the more devastating.

‘Most people, in an ideal situation, only get one wedding day and want to remember that day forever so not having access to photos and videos of their special day is heartbreaking,’ said Valerie Griswold, executive director of Investigations & Enforcement for the Better Regulation Division at NSW Fair Trading. ‘It is a consolation that using NSW Fair Trading powers these victims will be compensated and during our investigation we were also able to deliver raw footage to some people who thought they may never be able to watch their special day.

‘It’s a great result and a warning to anyone who doesn’t deliver the goods or services for which they were paid.’

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