#5 (5 of 9 for June 9, 2000)

Unprofessional film processing lab-Shooters of USA

Online Businesses, General

From: MJ Wilson Email User

Date: Thursday, June 08, 2000 11:24 PM

Sent To: Email User 6/8/2000 11:24:12 PM

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This is a problem I have had with a film processing lab out of the Chicago area called Shooters of USA Lab. This letter has also been sent to the webassured.com website as well as planetfeedback: This company (Shooters of USA LAB) calls themselves a professional film lab. I sent in an order for 60 slide duplications to them on March 28, 2000. I paid $71.80 for this order. The finished product arrived badly scratched and I called the company to complain. I was told to send the order in for "redo" which I did on April 11, 2000. At that time I told the lab that if their work was not more professional than what they had sent me, then I would rather have my money back than waste the time waiting for them to redo the job correctly. I was given to their slide duplication manager, Joe, who assured me that the slides would be redone correctly. I received the redo from them on May 2, 2000. While not as badly scratched, each slide had some sort of damage to it, either scratch marks, dirt, etc. I called Joe to complain and he stated that he was NOT going to redo them again and would rather just refund my money. He told me to mail the entire order back to him and he would take care of it. I selected eight of the worst slides and marked them for him to see. As mentioned above, the whole order was damaged again. On May 15th, I called Joe to see where the refund was. He transferred me to some gentleman named "Di Pesh" who had no idea what was going on. I called again and spoke to Joe. He told me that he would get in touch with the lab manager, Nick, and would get back to me the following day with regards to the status of my refund. I called Joe again on May 16th. He asked me if Nick had "handled" it, I told him that I hadn't received any calls yet so he transferred me to Nick. This Nick person was a rude, obnoxious person. He stated that they would NOT refund my money, since they had already done the order twice and there was nothing wrong with the order at all! Of course this set off an argument with me demanding my money back and him refusing to give it. He also kept saying that I should send them $4.55 so they could mail me back the damaged slides! I threatened to report him to the Better Business Bureau and with other Web agencies. He didn't seem to care. He had a totally cavalier attitude about this. I told him that this was fraud since they had my money and had the product and again he told me to mail him the $4.55 to return the damaged order to me or else he would be throwing away the slides in five days time. I told him that Joe had told me to return the order and that he would refund my money and Nick said that Joe had no authorization to make this offer. If this was the case, I wonder why Joe offered it to me. This lab calls themselves a professional lab and they are not. Their work is not professional in the least bit since they provide you with damaged materials as final product and their business attitude is not professional to say the least bit. I want my $71.80 returned because they never provided me with acceptable product. Both the original order and redo order arrived with damaged slides. I had to take my original slides and have the job done again at a professional lab. If this company refuses to refund my money, I will do everything in my power to report on their unscrupulous business activities both on the Internet and off. I have already reported them to the Better Business Bureau for the greater Chicagoland area as well as several websites that are geared towards helping consumers who are ripped off. !