No I haven't. Will look into this as a third party view would be good. I've not requested every single image with issues be fixed (there was a lot), just the ones where it is in detail areas.
We advised our album choices in mid-January. It took another 2 months to receive low-res PDFs of the album to review, which were supposed to be fixed. First week of April, we requested full-res proofs of the album as it was not possible to review the lower-quality proofs for the problems. 2 weeks later we receive that. 1 week later when I've finished (again) reviewing them, we have the discussion about how displeased we are. That was 3 weeks ago.
I think you do need a professional assessment. There are 3 issues here - the quality of the photographs, secondly - the management of dealing with the complaint, and thirdly the timescales involved
This isnt a critisism, it is some advice on how a judge or other professional will view this.. being fair to both sides - I think you also need to not say it is 7 months, although the weding was 7 months ago, it took till mid Jan to choose the prints... I have 2 clinets from last year who still havent chosen thier album images - its nearing a year now. One of the albums for those customers will take atleast 6 weeks to produce after the design is OK'ed. The design isnt done yet, as the images are not chosen etc. etc. From the point the customer says ZYX, it may easily take another 2 months, and that is assuming we dont reject the album, or have to re-work the design
When were YOU first aware of the visible dust issue?
To take the issue of copyright, the album maker, the design and the PDF's out of the loop, why not request a sample from say 5 of the images at full high res - i.e.request this: please email me: ... corrected image, at 100% size, as a quality = 100% JPEG, of crop of RHS of brides face in image 456 etc.. choose images that were used in your album. If the correction work has been done by the photographer, it will normally only take a hour or so to retrieve crop and e-mail the files, assuming he isnt mad busy on something else
What make album is it? There is a posibility the design work is being done by the album maker. Some companies are notoriously slow, but then equally the work they do is pretty painstaking and excellent
On the other hand - visible dust, in images presented to a clinet is pretty bad. Popping the captain fair hat on again - it is possible to be caught by it, even if you are the most careful photographer. I certainly have started the day with a squeaky clean sensor, and then had a dust issue from 1.00PM onwards. It isnt something you know about untill you get home.. and that was on a camera with no lens changes. On the otherhand, it only normally shows badly at F22 etc. which is the least often used end of the scale at a wedding
Also - in the cases where I have had a speck of dust appear, They have allways been edited out before the client was even aware of them. That is the normal ususal realistic face of photography
What does your contract say about delivery and quality?