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Gary Fong and the Wedding Album Upsell Scam

from 165 - Please Come Kill Us · #165

7 min

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Continuing the Wix-adjacent riff, Tim and Ray roleplay the Gary Fong wedding photography upsell technique, deleting cherished family photos one by one to pressure a couple into paying for a pricier album.

In this bit10 moments
  • Gary Fong used to sell weird attachments for photography and a system to upsell wedding albums.
  • Tim bought a $300 DVD set from Gary Fong about selling wedding photography through collages in Photoshop.
  • The Gary Fong technique: design an elaborate collage, show it to clients, then charge extra or threaten to remove photos they want.
  • Make a collage of people's photos and hold them hostage by upselling them on different album tiers.
  • Tim demonstrates the upsell tactic: offer a $300 album, then destroy the $1,200 album by removing pictures until they comply.
  • Long Island customers don't care about their families, so the Gary Fong system doesn't work on them.
  • Tim role-plays the photographer pitch: 'I've taken the liberty of designing more deluxe layouts for you.'
  • The fake album design reveals itself: what looked like the $300 package actually costs $1,200.
  • His wife heard horror stories from friends who all got 'fonged' by photographers using this upsell trick.
  • Tim's negotiation: 'Honey, pick the pictures where you look fat' to get the price down from $1,200 to $600.
Mentioned here

Gary FongWixLong IslandGary Vaynerchuk

All 24 moments in this episode →