Photochannel

In the middle of November 2000 I sent in a roll of film to Photochannel.com for processing and was notified a few days later by email that my images were ready for viewing. I went to the site and logged in to look at my first pictures with them only to find that all the images had been displayed vertically so that you had to lean your head 90 degrees to the left to look at them. I figured it wasn't a big deal, I could download them and rotate them with my imaging software. For some reason the pictures would not download, all I could get in my "save as" window was .html documents. This was about 9:00pm, but I called the 800 number they included in the email and someone claiming to be with customer support answered. I explained my problems and she didn't understand either of them. I had to question her several times to ensure that she actually was customer service and not an answering service, but she didn't seem to know anything about what I was talking about. She then said she would transfer me to technical support and put me on hold. After waiting awile, I was transferred to tech support's voicemail aftrer a message told me they were closed at that time of night. So I was kind of upset that someone would knowingly transfer me to a number that was closed. I called back and went through the same ordeal with the next person who also could not explain to me why they would knowingly transfer me to a number that was closed.

I called back the next business day and got a woman who said she knew of the vertical picture problem and that it would be corrected within a few days. She couldn't explain the failure to download. During the next week while I waited, I tried to download the pictures using Internet Explorer 4 and it worked. I had earlier tried to rotate them using the editing feature of the site, but found it too be a very clumsy and time consuming process, it wasn't designed well for that. After this week, I checked back and they were still oriented wrong. I called back and got a guy named Larry who told me that they have no remedy for misoriented pictures. He then suggested to me that I download them and fix them myself (as I already had done), at which point I asked him why I should have to fix something that his company screwed up. He would only respond that there was nothing he could do about it. I told him that was pretty sad that his company had no concern for the sloppy handling of it's customers' pictures. He asked me if there was anything else I needed. So I asked him why I hadn't received my negatives back in the mail yet as is the arrangement with them. He said that enough time hadn't passed yet, 7-10 days was needed. So I then asked him if he didn't care if customers took their business elsewhere and he said no. I hung up at that point.

A day or two later I called back again in the evening to leave a message at that voicemail I had been given earlier and let them know that I would not be doing any further business with them. The lady transferred me and the line just rang. Finally an English sounding lady answered and I told her I was trying to leave a complaint on the voicemail., She told me to hold on and then a man answered asking if he could help me. I asked who he was and he answered ____ ____ . I told him the story and he sounded truly apologetic, angry even about Larry, who he said he would take care of. He explained that the first lady must have meant that the orientation problem being taken care of was the cause itself, not the actual fixing of the individual pictures, but that he could easily have them fixed and would do so the next day. He stated that he would have my account credited for a free developing as well. I then gave him a few suggestions for making his site more user friendly and he seemed very reseptive to them. He then gave me his personal phone number at the company and told me to call him if I had any other problems! I checked a day or two later and the pictures were straightened out. I didn't see anything about a credit, but I don't think I will see that until I actually go to purchase some prints.

I feel vindicated enough to add them to my Kudos page, but I still haven't received my negatives yet, it's now been a couple of weeks. I'll let you know. At least this guy sounded like he genuinely cared about what happens to his customers, but I doubt most people would have gone to the extent I did to make a point. I might check back to see if Larry has gotten an attitude adjustment.

I wrote again on January 01, 2001 asking where my negatives were and was told:

Or the lack of concern by your company, which is most likely the reason. I finally got them in late January. Is there some reason that you take 3 MONTHS to return someone's negatives to them as promised??? I am still waiting to hear your answer.

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