From: donl@glass.esd.sgi.com (donl mathis)
Newsgroups: rec.photo
Subject: Re: Lab Screw-Up!
Date: 7 Apr 92 06:41:11 GMT
Reply-To: donl@glass.esd.sgi.com (donl mathis)
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA, USA


In article <1992Apr6.210814.26143@midway.uchicago.edu>,
ar12@quads.uchicago.edu (Richard Nixon) writes:
|> Hello,
|> 	I'm writing this post in a state of uncontrolled rage so please
|> excuse any whatever typos/incoherencies may follow.

I did that once!

|> I just had a photo lab, "The University of Chicago Audio Visual Dept",
|> [ruin] a roll of film.
|> [...]  Well, they [...] reimbursed the processing
|> charge [...] and gave me two rolls of Ektachrome
|> 100 in liue of my original roll of ESS which they don't stock.  [...]

|> What I wan't to know, is what kind of legal protection (if any) do      
|> photographers have against the incompetence of others?

I don't want to make you angrier -- I'm hoping you've calmed down a bit
by now.  I've been where you are.  There is a certain reality to your
situation, though.

Was there anything written on the envelope you submitted your film in?
Did you read it?  I'm going to guess -- yes, there was something on
their about their liability, and no, you didn't read it.  I signed a
contract once without reading it, and it nearly cost me several
thousand dollars.  In my case, I moved fast enough to cancel the
contract, and everything worked out fine, but I learned a lesson.

Legal protection usually seems to come in the form of a contract, which
is an agreement between two parties about what each's responsibilities
are.  There's a notice on the side of *every* Kodak product I've ever
seen, that goes something like this:  "We warrent this product against
defects in materials, packaging, and labeling, and if there is a
problem, we will replace the product.  We accept no responsibilities
for any other problems, if we're incompetent or make some kind of
stupid mistake."  If you don't like those rules, you don't use the
product -- it's that simple.  Kodak doesn't really owe anybody a
specific level of competence.  They cannot legally lie about what their
products can do, or that sort of thing, but they are not obligated to
provide a certain level of quality.  Similarly for their processing
labs (even when they were still Kodak-owned and operated).  If you
don't like the way they do business, or the promises they make about
their business, you should not use them.  The same goes for any other
lab.

Step one, then, is to learn from it, and find a lab you can trust for
next time.  (This also touches gingerly on the "getting on with life
after a tragedy" theme, for whatever that's worth.)  Maybe it will cost
you more money, and maybe it will be less convenient, but maybe your
chances will improve.

If that doesn't work out, you can do what I did, and move on to step
two -- buy a Jobo, and do it yourself.  I've botched one (one) batch of
film since I started processing it myself, because I was lazy and cheap
and used old chemistry.  There's nobody to blame, or to trust, except
myself, and I take reasonably good care of my own film.  I've never run
it through an automatic scratching machine, or stepped on it, or put it
in somebody else's envelope and sent somebody else's film home with me,
or cut film in the middle of an important frame, or any of the other
horrible things that other labs do.  We have a saying around Mathis
Photo -- "Better do this right!" -- and usually that's enough.

I can't see paying some monkey who doesn't know or care anything about
photography minimum wages to experiment on my film.

I know not everybody can do this, and that in fact, it's a very small
fraction of photographers who can.  But it is the ultimate act of
voting with your feet when it comes to finding a good lab.  Next best,
I'd say, is find a professionally-oriented lab, and pay them what they
ask.

- donl mathis at Silicon Graphics Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA
donl@sgi.com
Newsgroups: rec.photo