Product photos not matching reality

A practical guide to product photos not matching reality: what to check on site, what a photograph cannot establish, and what to write in your purchase specification.

Almost every buyer who orders furniture from China has received a photo album that looked excellent. Some of those albums were staged. More of them were incomplete in ways that had nothing to do with intent.

Five ways a photo album misleads without anyone lying

• One good angle. The sun-facing, cleaned-up corner of the batch. Nobody photographs the other four sides.
• The pre-production sample. The unit in the photograph may not be the batch you paid for.
• Lighting and filters. A warm filter hides a colour mismatch that will be obvious under your warehouse lights.
• Newly tidied units. A carton opened for the photograph is restacked afterwards. Handling marks appear in transit.
• Selective cartons. Three hundred cartons in the container, five photographed.

What an on-site check does that a camera cannot

An inspector draws a sample from across the batch rather than from the front, weighs a component, measures with a tape, reads an instrument, loads the unit until it moves, and photographs the sample set together rather than the best single unit.

why factory photographs are not evidence sets out what that produces in a report you can rely on in a dispute.

The test worth applying

Ask the supplier for a photograph of a specific carton mark, with a tape measure visible in frame, taken at a carton you identify rather than one they choose. If the answer comes back within an hour, the batch is probably what it appears to be. If it comes back in two days with a different angle, you have your answer.