Sunday, July 12, 2009

Where I bag photo processing Part 1

Why would you? I mean really why, by choice, would anyone process their photos at Camera House.

Earlier this year my parents brought a little digital point and shoot for my brother and sister. They researched their options and found a 'good deal'
* (Conditions apply) at Camera House. What the good deal meant was that they got $100 odd dollars worth of vouchers * (Conditions apply) for photo processing at Camera House. Because she didn't think she'd use them in time Sylvia gave me one of the vouchers to use.

One of the
* (Condition applying) was that the vouchers had staggered use-by dates eg 1 month, 2 months, 3 months from date of 'purchase'. I'm not even sure that legal under the consumers act. But essentially I believe that it's a ploy in the hopes that people won't get around to using their voucher.

The second
* (Condition applying) is that it is only for their do-it-yourself photo processing machines. So I called them up and asked the price per photo; 39 cents. Are you kidding me?? That's twice what most other places are charging.

So I chose my 64 photos (didn't want to have to spend any money at all) and Will and I went in. I sat down at the machine and put my memory stick in. Then slowly the old dinosaur cranked itself up and s-l-o-w-l-y it found my photos and then
s-l-o-w-l-y I went through the process of s-l-o-w-l-y selecting which I wanted and s-l-o-w-l-y through the various other choices involved like using Matte paper * (Conditions apply). At this point I will say it costs an extra $2 to use Matte paper. This suggests to me that as a customer I am a bit of an inconvenience by wanting to use something other than glossy. I originally thought maybe the paper cost more... but that would be a per-photo charge not a flat fee. Can I just mention the term 'Customer Service' here I mean we customers hate to be a pain by bringing them business and all, and you know, um, ah, profits!

There were three photos that needed cropping
* (Conditions apply). So using their antiquated software I s-l-o-w-l-y used my own fingers to carefully drag the little box on the screen to crop my own photos. I used all my own energy and effort. And for the pleasure of doing that I charged myself 10 cents per photo and decided through the kindness of my heart to give that money to camera house. Oh no hang on actually they charged me to crop MY photos on their ANTIQUATED SLOW software.

And then it was time to finish the process fill in my details and accept their terms and have the machine print my payment details. Yeah, bloody payment details. I know it's only $2.30 but I didn't want to put any more cash in their hands!

The final
* (Condition applying) was that is was the 'later that day service'. At my usual photo processing service they do the same. BUT at my usual photo processing service the nice lady tells me what's going on; eg if they have a pile of orders waiting and it'll be the time it says on the ticket (I go home and come back at a time that suits). Or they have a couple of small orders and it'll be 30 mins or an hour or something like that (I go have a look around spotlight and other local stores) or it's going to be 5 minutes (I hang out, check out their scrapbooking section and let Will ride the Buzzy bee). At my local Camera House (Westcity, Henderson) there isn't a nice lady or a nice guy, in fact there is a soulless fellow who doesn't even bother to listen to your questions, so we went home.

A few days later (this place isn't particularly close to home, and its in the mall so you can't just dash in) I went and picked up my photos. Verdict; crap.

The majority of the pictures looked washed out there is a higher level of unintended cropping (eg the bits that get lost off the edge in the printing process) than I would see at my usual place. Which can be a real pain in the butt if you have put text or a digital frame on your pictures.

If you are a Camera House customer- you have no idea what you are missing out on! Go somewhere else.

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