Max Spielman Review

Overall Rating

None

Marked photos
Blue tint
Several photos are misaligned (1" black strip through the centre)
1 entire film was exposed to print back to front
Staff were not at all interested in my complaint

I took 2 rolls of film to Max Spielmann, BIG MISTAKE!!!

Flicking through our holiday snaps a vertical black line started to appear at the edge, as we turned through each snap the line got thicker and more central. It ended up that on several prints we had the black line with the left half being one picture and the right half being a different picture! Obviously an automated system is used to output prints and they have no quality control.

When I returned to the shop, the assistant told me there was nothing they could do about it. That is until I showed her the negatives which were fine. She disappeared to see the manager. On her return I was told they would try and put it right but that my camera is probably to blame! Do they think customers are stupid? I repeated, "the negs are fine, there is no reason why you cannot produce a print from them". Anyway, I left the negs with them (bad idea?) and now have to wait a day as they are having problems with 'the machine'.

BUT, that's not all folks! On viewing the second batch of prints from a separate roll of film, I thought 'that's a little strange, the TV seems to be in the other corner of the room and the kitchen sink appears to be mirrored as is the writing on a t shirt!'They have only gone and exposed prints to an upside down negative. The assistant was confused as to why I thought this was a problem, well would you listen to a CD end to beginning? Anyway, rather begrudgingly she took the negatives and told me they would try to put them right.

Photographs are treasured memories and should be treated with respect.

The bottom line is they do not care and have no quality control.

Members' Comments oncongosam's Review

• pinkcocopops on 25th Aug 2005

  Having used max spielmann several times, i ask myself why!!! When all i get is terrible service from staff that are 'too busy' to make sure the frame i am spending good money on fits the photograph, then lose two films of photographs containing all my graduation photos and holiday photos from my summer holiday in corfu, to returning only 5-15 developed prints from a 25 picture film... this is not a one off occurence, the staff are more than unhelpful and the quality of prints (if you are lucky enough to get them) is devastatingly bad.

• toytrain on 4th Nov 2005

  In reply to 'congosams' review...
  
  I'm sorry to hear of your small mishap with Max Spielmann but 'black lines' on photos is no fault of the lab assistant, sometimes scanners cannot read the start/end of frames, especially if the photos are dark. These prints can simply be re-aligned later.
  
  The mirror-images are due to human error but in the end does not result in any drastic problem, prints like this should just be taken back to the lab and the assistant informed.

• noggin2k1 on 4th Jan 2006

  The black lines are due to a film fault, where there is a faulty dx alignment on the negatives, therefore the scanner reads them incorrectly. I would also like to make a point that scratches on the film are down to dirt getting into the camera and consequently making a scratch down the whole of the negative. In every single 'scratch on negative' case I have dealt with, I can honestly say that everytime it's been traced back to the camera, I wish people would look at the apparatus and quality of film they use before pinning the blame on the company!