Honestly, as of my last article, I thought that PhotoWorks® and I had parted company. But that was not to be. Again I fell into my own trap of trust!

My last phone contact with the PhotoWorks® customer service department before the next horrendous episode of my dilemma, was on April 2nd. That was the date that Belinda, the day time supervisor for PhotoWorks®, had promised me a rerun of my missing rolls, at the same time telling me that it would take two weeks for PhotoWorks® to do that. About two days later, I received a letter. It appeared to me to be a half-hearted attempt at an apology. (PhotoWorks® should seriously think about hiring someone proficient in writing humble apology letters.)

"We recently received an inquiry from you regarding an order shipped to, but which you had not received," the PhotoWorks® letter started out. Recently! Inquiries! I started making my demands a week before. Shipped! I acutely doubted that my order had been shipped at all. I was already convinced that PhotoWorks® had lost my order internally. Their reps and supervisors were covering up their company's inefficiency.

"We are following up to make sure that your photos have now arrived. If they have, we hope that you are enjoying them." Arrived! Enjoying them! How insensitive! *247, who authored the letter, should have been calling me everyday to check up on whether or not I had received my photos.

Next came the part of finger pointing. "If your order has not yet arrived, it is possible that the order is still delayed in the postal system. Delayed in the postal system indeed! I have been shipping letters and packages priority mail for years and I have yet had one delayed or lost by the postal service. Too many businesses use them as scapegoats to cover up their bad service.

The next statement in PhotoWorks'® letter was the kicker. If I had not been so angry, it would have sent me into gales of laughter. "It is also possible that there was a problem with the delivery address. In that case, since we guarantee return postage, the Postal Service should return the order to us." Wrong Address! PhotoWorks® has been sending me my orders for over three years. Since their mailing labels are done electronically, it isn't suddenly likely that my mailing label would have been printed wrong.

Now comes the closing and appeasing paragraph. "…and apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you. This letter serves as a certificate good for free developing on your next roll of film." Free developing on one roll of film! I have two rolls missing out of an eight roll project and PhotoWorks® offers me eight dollars worth of free service that costs them about two dollars! I looked up the word 'insult' in the Random House Master Dictionary and I was only able to find nine synonyms: affront, abuse, offense, rude, slur, slight, outrage, insolence and offensive. None of them suited what I felt at PhotoWorks® offer of appeasement.

About four days later, on Friday, April 7th, I found a small package in my mail. I opened it to find only a CD, an index print of my photos and at least three PhotoWorks® reorder forms! I blew! In a photo rage I reached for the phone and dialed PhotoWorks'® toll free number. After a long wait, but not long enough to dissipate my photo rage, a rep answered; I directly asked for a supervisor, whose name escapes me for this moment.

"May I help you?" "Where are my hard copies?" I asked, through clenched teeth, after I identified myself. "Oh yes, Ms… I see here, on my screen, that you hung up on the supervisor the last time you called." "Where are my hard copy photos?" I repeated, without acknowledging her observances. "You have only sent the CD…" "That's because both are not processed at the same time, in the same place. Your hard copy prints are being reproduced digitally." "Are you saying that my prints won't have negatives?" Long pause.

"I see here, on my screen, that your negatives were returned to us by the Post Office. It seems that the two-roll package we sent you was damaged in transit and all of its contents were lost, except for the negatives. Only they survived. So, we are using those to reprint your order." My brain reeled and my thoughts spun into a tangled ball that felt like knotted threads. I found her story unacceptable. PhotoWorks® method of shipping is: Hard prints, coupled with a photo index in one pocket of a hard envelope, with negatives, in plastic sleeves, coupled with a CD, in another pocket of the same hard envelop. When I recovered, I asked her, "How could everything except the negatives get lost?" Ignoring my question, she said, "At any rate, your order is being processed and, as soon as it's ready, we will ship it to you by Priority Mail. We will also be refunding your money as our way of trying to rectify this problem."

Priority mail, as I said before, takes three days from any part of these United States. On Thursday, April 12th, I phoned the Customer Service Department of Photoworks® again. This time a pleasant, jovial, young man answered. And again, his name escapes me. At this point I only want results, not familiarity and joviality. "May I help you?" Again I identified myself, this time in a deliberate, bored voice. "After I finish with my request, you are not going to want to continue talking with me. I want to know where my hard copy prints are? They were supposed to have been shipped…" "Oh, I love talking to people!" he retorted exuberantly. "That's why I do this kind of work." I could hear that he was checking his computer screen. "Hmm, it says her that they are in process and…" "What! They were supposed to have been shipped…" "Well, Maam, you have to give us time to process…" "No, No!" I exclaimed. With that I attempted to go through my whole story; he stopped me midway. "You can't expect companies to be perfect," he claimed as his argument. I was appalled. "Of course that what I expect if, without argument, I'm paying top dollar for its services!"

Again he checked his screen, this time saying that he had overlooked a notation. "Excuse me, your order was shipped Priority Mail yesterday. You should be receiving it shortly."

PhotoWorks® did ship my order via Priority Mail, but not until the following Thursday, on April 19th. My nightmare and my photo rage with PhotoWorks® ended when I received my package on Monday, April 23rd, one month and four days after they had first notified me, by e-mail, that my two rolls were shipped via Priority Mail.

EDITOR'S NOTE:
We all must make an effort to attack poor service whenever and wherever we encounter it. There are many means open to the consumer. One of the most effective ways that I know of is boycott. If you can possibly avoid the mail-order trap I was in, do so. Patronize your local photo developer. Direct your email to the Editor.