I appreciate everybody's responses with the suggestions of alternatives
places.
I thought I'd provide an update about the saga with AdoramaPix.
Last week, I spoke with Adoramapix representatives and they offered as one
of the options to upload the files with the SRGB color space and they said
they would do "their best effort" to expedite printing and to ship
overnight it after that. I indicated (as with the original order), that
I hoped to receive it by Saturday.
That was Tuesday afternoon (July 12).
At that point I thought maybe they are good about taking care of the
hiccups (and almost wrote about it to PDML..., but decided to wait till
the end).
Today is July 18, the date by which my original order should have arrived,
and they still haven't finished printing the "expedited" order,
"because due to the high volume of orders they had technical
difficulties".
So much for "expediting".
(Their website says: "Our normal turnaround on prints is 2-4 days.
Expedited service will cut this turnaround down to 1 business day. Please
have your orders in before 10am in order to get them shipped out the same
day.")
They didn't bother contacting me, or responding to my e-mail inquiry I
sent on Friday.
Ufortunately, I no longer need some 60 photos from that
order after today. In the end, I had to order those photos to be printed
at Walmart 1-hour lab. So, I canceled that order (even though I paid only
the shipping, as I used their 100 free prints offer).
Obviously nobody can return me the time wasted for ordering on their
website (which is quite considerable, as the UI is very sluggish).
While I admit that I should have been more careful and should have noticed
that they only accept SRGB images, their handling of the order is far from
what you expect from a "professional print shop": They e-mailed me that
they cannot deal with any other color spaces, and didn't tell me what
would be happening next, or what my options were. They didn't tell me that
the order was put on hold. And that was already a full week (!) after
the order was placed.
And even if they had the printer breaking (the way the CSR spoke about
that was not straight forward and was not convincing), they should be
informing about that, especially for the "Expedited" orders.
If you paid the expedited fee and overnight shipping and had not received
it after 6 days with a total silence about the delay, what would be your
reaction?
Bottom line:
Terrible-terrible service. Far from "professional".
Additionally, - the information about the order status does not get
updated on the website. The order that was cancelled last Tuesday is still
showing as "processing". There is also an old order that shows 2006 in one
place and 2012 in another; the status for it is "processing".
Conclusions:
1. If I'd ever use Adoramapix again, that would be for the jobs where I
can wait for at least a month.
2. Free cheese is only in a mousetrap.
Caveat Emptor!
Igor
PS. Sorry for the lengthy message. - I am not trying to vent here.
I am rather calm about it. But I wanted to make other aware of what can
go wrong with Adoramapix, should you consider using this lab in the
future. Adoramapix is _UNRELIABLE_ .
On Mon, 11 Jul 2016, Igor PDML-StR wrote:
I've be seriously disappointed by Adoramapix today.
And there might be some useful information (a warning) for anybody who
considers using them.
Well, let me tell the entire story.
In the era of film, I've used to print at Adorama store in person, while
living in NYC, and I had my favorite master that I was asking to print my
photos, even if that would take an extra day because it wasn't his day.
The way Michael was doing colors was what I wanted.
Then after moving away from NYC, I've used Adoramapix a few times to order
photos via mail to some relatives on the East cost, and some photos for
myself.
Fast-forward some 8-10 years. A few months ago, Adoramapix started sending
their spam (aka UCE) to the address used for my account with them.
That's after more than 8 years of no relations. (This IS a violation of the
existing, albeit miserably failed anti-spam laws. But this message is not
about that.)
Just before July 1, I've got an e-mail from them with a special code for 100
free 4x6 photos.
I actually needed to print something. So, I ordered them. Of course, the
shipping is not free, and the faster you want them shipped things quicly pick
up quite some price (that's apart from the "rush processing" if you want to
have them printed within less then a week).
I've sent photos with the embedded Adober RGB (And a few with PhotoRGB) color
profiles. At the last moment, I've written in the comments that
is am embedded color profile in each photo (PhotoRGB or AdobeRGB).
A week later (when I am thinking that my order is hopefully already put in
the mail), I am getting an e-mail message (in between 4 identical
Adorama+AdoramaPix spam messages "Adorama + Nigel Barker | Will You Be Our
Top Photographer?"):
" I hope you understand that our lab only prints correctly images that are
converted to SRGB only. We do not print any other color profiles."
Virginia C. CS Agent
Doh! The can only work with SRGB?!
They, who do not think twice before throwing in the word "professional" near
"photography" and "printing"?!
And it took them a week to read that and to respond, and to suggest no
options, nothing...
Caveat Emptor!
I just looked: Adoramapix got awful rating on ResellerRatings:
http://www.resellerratings.com/store/Adorama_Pix
I know, I suggested AdoramaPix as a printing shop few times to PDMLers.
My sincere apologies!
Igor
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