Kodak woes

Time to vent!

A few nights ago I went to Target to have some reprints made of some pictures my Mom took at Glacier National Park earlier this summer. I had the negatives, and had written down the ID numbers I wanted reprinted. Normally I would saunter up to the self-service photo kiosk and fill out a small envelope (just slightly larger than a strip of negatives) that has a graph on one side to indicate the number of the negative, the size of the reprint, and the quantity. But for some reason, these helpful little envelopes were missing. Nary a one in sight. I asked someone at the counter if they could help, and they told me to come back later when people who actually knew what they were doing would be available. Yes, that was their actual answer! (Note to clerk: not the best reply).

I had a bad feeling about that response, so tonight, rather than return to Target, I decided to go to Walgreen's instead (this coming from a die-hard Target fan!). And when I told the helpful lady at the photo counter what I wanted to do, she whipped out a blank sheet of paper and stood at the ready, pen poised mid-air, as if to transcribe my last will. "What about the envelopes for reprinting negatives?" I asked. Was I going crazy? Was this nothing more than a figment of my imagination? No! The helpful lady at the counter informed me that Kodak has stopped shipping the reprint envelopes to Walgreens. Why, I asked? She didn't know, but speculated it was to save money (and despite my frustration, I could've hugged her for confirming that I was not going crazy!)

Now, it's probably premature to jump to conclusions, but it does seem a bit ODD that neither Target nor Walgreens have these helpful little envelopes this week. And while this is not, in the grand scheme of things, a BIG DEAL, it definitely is inconvenient if you want to make reprints! Let's just assume the worst for a moment and assume that Kodak HAS decided to stop making these. Why in the world would Kodak want to make it difficult for customers to buy and print MORE pictures? Are they really losing that much money that they need to make it difficult for your customers to order more?

It's possible! As this article in Slate makes clear, not only is Kodak not doing so well, they've demonstrated some pretty poor decision-making skills lately. This is due, in part, to the fact that Kodak was so slow to recognize and embrace the digital photography phenomenon. And this is ironic, because now they are apparently making it more difficult to get reprints from film!

http://slate.msn.com/id/2093512/

Now you may think that this is not a big deal - just write down the numbers already on a sheet of paper and get on with it. But I have a problem with this, because suddenly there's no common understanding that what *I* write down will be what the person at the lab will understand. How do I make it clear that I want two reprints of negative number 6 at 5x7, when I have a second roll of film with negatives sharing the same number? How do I know what my reprint size options are? Do all the negatives get dumped into one envelope, or do I need to fill out one per negative? You get the idea. It can be done, but it will be messy, and I'm not at all confident that I will get what I'm asking for.

Contrary to what I've just written, I have no strong feelings about Kodak. I use their online photo gallery all the time to share my digital pics with friends and family, and for the most part the site works well. But if this is NOT a coincidence, and they really have decided to do away with film negative reprint envelopes at Target, Walgreens, and every other brick-and-mortar store, then someone needs to tell them that making life inconvient for customers is NOT a smart business strategy.