After singing Dyson's praises yesterday I suppose it is only fitting another company makes my blood boil today. I don't think I ever wrote about it but a couple of years ago my wife and I went to Ibiza to spread my brother's ashes with my family. I took my SLR camera and ended up taking about seven rolls of film out there. Louise took them to
Jessops in Sheffield city centre near Ponds Forge. We used them a little before that and I actually bought my SLR camera from them about six months earlier.
She asked for one hour processing when she dropped them off on her lunch hour. We went to collect the films at about 16:30ish after work and they weren't ready - in fact they had not even started to process them. The machine wasn't doing anything at the time. They actually lied and claimed that she had asked for four hour processing (we didn't even know they offered that - all that was advertised was one hour or next day I believe). They weren't even ready in four hours. They had a kid with long hair in the back who did the processing and he actually started talking about Louise with the other staff whilst she was stood there - hurling insults at her which she overheard as he wasn't talking as quietly as he might have thought.
I complained to the manager, he was pretty spineless and didn't do anything about this rude employee. He offered us the processing for free, but then when he realised how expensive it would be backtracked and offered it to us half price. We stood there and waited whilst the kid who was so rude continued to process the film. In the end (after about 45 minutes) we got our photos and I let the manager know again just how unhappy I was. I also wrote a letter of complaint to their head office and got a reply back basically saying we're sorry and not a lot else.
Then yesterday I was placing an order with
Club 35 whom I have found to be very good over the last year or two. As I was looking at the negatives I noticed that the photo I wanted an enlargement of has had its edge sliced off. Looking through the other negatives quite a few of them are like this. Now Jessops is supposed to be an award winning photo processor (part of the reason I paid more to use them) but I also remember him slamming the blade down as he was chopping up the negatives. To me that is just gross incompetence or possibly even malicious. I prefer to believe incompetence but I suspect it was malicious.
That guy didn't have a clue how much or how little those photos meant to me or my wife. Hopefully the guys at Club 35 will be able to make an enlargement from the negative anyway, but I really just wanted to write this post to express my sheer anger. Jessops should discipline their staff if they behave in such a manner, it upset my wife and that guy has damaged the negatives to my pictures from an event that will only ever happen once. It also reminds me how much trust you are forced to put in strangers and how it is so easy to let you down...
When I asked what was the difference between the cameras, he said none, they all do the same thing. I said I wanted something simple to use to which he replied 'if you cant mange one of them you cant manage any of them. I said I wanted something fairly robust so he said dont buy one of these, get a camera phone. I asked about internal storage of immages, he said they dont have any. I managed to extract from him that they have a memory card. How many immages do they hold? Depends whether you want to use it or leave it in the box he said, and so it went on unti I decided enough was enough and left.
I did ask if he realised that his attitude had lost him a sale and he smiled for the first time and said yes!
I have sent a message to jessops via their web site but had no reply. I cannot find the address of their head office. The service is disgraceful and I will not be using jessops in the future.
Robert Bates
but then on the other hand, i have noticed that jessops themselves have not given 2 hoots about their labs recently. they just shut down the only one in our town (which leaves me without a job) and there isn't another one within 10 miles. not to be giving it a disgruntled employee angle, i did really love my job, but thier aim seems to be cutting corners and makin profits even when it greatly reduces customer satisfaction.
since i started they have been trying to "give jessops and fresh, young look" which basically meant rather than keeping their well respected customer care-based and knowledgable, mature staff, they basically started employing spotty teenagers who couldn't care one way or another. which is obviously where they lose their repsect and customer base.