Boot’s position seems very reasonable to me you were only prepared to pay for a lower priced service but you expected a higher value and higher priced service.

In any business it would be at their discretion as to whether they were willing to take the hit on revenue dilution. IMO the staff were not being a jobsworths at all they were protecting their company’s margins and shareholder value, but I accept that you personally may not agree with this. It their business and their judgement call.

I can’t help but think that you seem to have the misconception that spare and idle capacity should result in lower prices, an easy mistake to make.

Are you the witch who works in my local post office?

I of course would accept that it was petty, and Boots should probably make if clear that if you pay for a 24 hour service then either they are not available for collection until the next day, or at the very least there is no guarantee that they will be available for collection

But the margin difference is huge £83 of additional margin, not revenue but margin, straight to the bottom line. As cynic-al says no company would want to educate a market in thinking it can pay for a 24 hour service and in return get a 2, 3 or 4 hour service etc.

Perhaps Boots should introduce 1 or 2 more products (2, 4 hour service sort of thing). Years ago in the days of film they had several services. I wonder why these no longer exist, other than there must be no market for them.

Personally I can not see many people pay the premium for a 1 hour service, but perhaps the figures are distorted by Pook’s large print run. Would I pay 5-10 times as much for a single print then yes, but for 100 then no?

Anyway I have a broom to rub down, before an early start in my new job in bedmaker’s local PO.

And they’d say “No, they aren’t. Come back tomorrow.”

Erm, no, because she’s already started saying yes.

I think in most of these cases it comes down not to staff being vindictive or petty but erm…not very intelligent. I genuinely think they just don’t really understand the meaning of flexibility or exercising your own initiative. I seriously doubt she was thinking of ‘protecting the companies margins’.

Sometimes people are just arseholes though- I’ve always had a grudge against the post office after I tried to renew my girlfriends passport for her through their ‘guranteed successful application’ service (or whatever it’s called). Obviously there’s a fair few hoops to jump through if you want to renew somebody else’s passport for them and I dutifully amended the forms a few times over a week or so after being turned away several times by the same guy who had a very poor attitude. By the fourth time he turned me away we ended up having a heated discussion about what the hell was going on and he was asking me stuff like ‘where’s she going on holiday anyway?’ which seems utterly irrelevant. So I explained that she was needing to go to Cyprus because her dad was seriously ill (true) and his whole attitude changed and he sorted it there and then. Just to put the icing on the cake our loud discussion had drawn one of the other staff over who then said that the original forms I had submitted like 4 days ago were fine anyway. Why the guy felt the need to behave like that I have no idea. Possibly he just hates other people going on holiday.

Of course this isn’t indicative of the whole post office but I quite like holding a grudge so they can all get **** now anyway.

Did he then try to sell you life insurance? They always do with me. No, just the book of stamps I came in for will do me fine thank you very much.

If the OP selected the 24 hour service how is it his fault if the photo’s are ready well before the time, therefore he did not ask for the fast/premium service so he wasn’t doing anyone out of anything, the assistant was being ridiculous for the hell of it. I would of gone elsewhere and left them with a bunch of photo’s, afterall OP hadn’t yet paid for them. That’ll teach them.

The 24 hr service is cheaper because the staff/company get a chance to have a proper look at your photos. It gives them the opportunity to make copies for themselves, scan and email funny ones to colleagues, and photoshop in amusing additions before the customer pics them up.

Going in early and demanding the photos denies the bored workers an opportunity to enjoy your pictures.

Good grief.

You pay a premium to guarantee a one-hour service by you’re essentially queue-jumping. The regular price doesn’t guarantee that, you’ll go to the back of the queue and your processing will take up to 24 hours.

I’m sure, *sure* that Boots intention was never to make you wait 24 hours for prints that were ready early. That’s madness. It’s a lower priority service, like second class post, not an intentionally withheld one.

I’d be tempted to write to head office, not to complain but to solicit clarification on their policy. I suspect they’d be very apologetic. (I wouldn’t, because I’m all mouth and no trousers, but I’d really want to).

Take a photo of your bell end, and ask her to develop that in an hour tomorrow. In A4. Simple.

I’m with you. Absolute dross customer service.

My best friend was once barred from a pub in central London for using the stairs at the front of the pub to go to the loo. You were allowed to go down them but not up to discourage people from the street nipping in to use the toilet. We’d been at the pub a couple of hours with a large group (well behaved for a change too) and although the manager admitted the rule was for our benefit (cleaner toilets for paying customers) and we’d spent quite a lot of money but “rules are rules mate”. He gave one concession and said the rest of us could stay if my friend left (we all went).

On the other hand I once had a traffic warden who saw me go into a bank and waited for me then explained that he SHOULD have given me a ticket but sometimes just reminding people is enough and that I should be more careful where I park next time.

The next step:
200 posed photos of your manhood on sd card – check
Return to the same boots -check.
1hour printing of said photos -check.
Never return to store again -chck.
(all without paying too!)

DrP

Beaten to it by paulosaxo!

Used to work in a 1hr processing lab many years back & it was policy to keep 24hr work back.

We even offered a 15min service, so you can guess how bad the grading was!

We would get roughly 10% of our 24hr customers trot back in after an hour, chancing it.

Saying that, all the 1hr labs I worked in, quality was terrible, most staff on low wages, could not care less about quality, customers!

Get yourself to a pro lab and pay for decent prints & service 😉

Just a thought, do they have a money back guarantee if your 1hr photos aren’t ready in an hour? If so, pay for them, then say they took 4 hours and get a refund…. 😈

I would check every single print for colour cast, exposure & framing, then…

Reject all that fail..

Then reject the corected reprints & ask for them to be redon, then reject the corected reprints & ask for them to be redon, then reject the corected reprints & ask for them to be redon, then reject the corected reprints & ask for them to be redon, then reject the corected reprints & ask for them to be redon, then reject the corected reprints & ask for them to be redon, then reject the corected reprints & ask for them to be redon, then reject the corected reprints & ask for them to be redon, then reject the corected reprints & ask for them to be redon, then reject the corected reprints & ask for them to be redon, then reject the corected reprints & ask for them to be redon, then reject the corected reprints & ask for them to be redon, then reject the corected reprints & ask for them to be redon, then reject the corected reprints & ask for them to be redon, then reject the corected reprints & ask for them to be redon, then reject the corected reprints & ask for them to be redon, then reject the corected reprints & ask for them to be redon, then reject the corected reprints & ask for them to be redon, then reject the corected reprints & ask for them to be redon, then reject the corected reprints & ask for them to be redon, then reject the corected reprints & ask for them to be redon, then reject the corected reprints & ask for them to be redon, then reject the corected reprints & ask for them to be redon, then reject the corected reprints & ask for them to be redon, then reject the corected reprints & ask for them to be redon, then reject the corected reprints & ask for them to be redon, then reject the corected reprints & ask for them to be redon……..

😉

Completely pathetic. I can’t believe shop workers would act like this when high street retailers are struggling.

Al et al – a 24 hour hour service is a guranteed service WITHIN 24 hours. If they’re done after 4 hours then they haven’t provided them with any premium service. They haven’t rushed the job, they haven’t done anything within an hour.
Sending customers away is ludicrous.
I take it your stance would remain if he returned the next day after 22 hours. Would you expect him to be told to come back two hours later?