My experience with DR5

[olwick]

Okay, first things first: I know that many people have had good luck with the DR5 B&W slide process. The featured gallery on APUG by Gavin Smith used DR5. I'm just sharing what happened to me because, when I was researching them, I couldn't find much information.

I sent off 6 rolls of various B&W films for processing to DR5. This was a mixture of films, all chosen by studying the DR5 site film comparison, so I could see the effect of the process on each for myself. All were medium format (either 645 or 6x7).

Their site said that they run their film in batches, normally every 3-5 days. No problem there. I sent it FedEx so I could track it from the day they recieved it and specified UPS Ground for the return shipping.

After a week of no communication I started to get a bit concerned. Then another week passed. I started to get worried that they weren't in business any more. They don't have an online ordering system. You have to write your credit card info down on the paper order form, so I started to get worried about fraud. I use a special credit card for my online purchases, so I transferred the money that I had on that card to another account, just to be safe. After 2.5 weeks, I got a decline message, so I e-mailed them back to let them know that I reenabled it and to ship it.

Again, no shipment confirmation at all. After a few days I finally used the alternate mail address on their site to see if it had been shipped back. I got a somewhat nasty e-mail from David, the owner, telling me that I needed to "fix" my e-mail. I use hotmail, so I ensured that I had them on my Safe list and let David know. He replied that they had problems with their customers who use hotmail and that I should be calling hotmail to get them to fix it. To me, if a business is losing customers due to this it would be the business wanting to get this resolved, not the responsibility of the customer.

Finally after 3 weeks I get a message from the POST OFFFICE that I had something to pick up. Weird. When I do, I find that it's my DR5 film. This despite specifying that I wanted UPS Ground.

Okay, aside from all that, how was the film? Some were okay, others were truly bad. Lots of spots on two rolls. Another roll had brown spots on it - I'm guessing that maybe some of the DR2 process got on it somehow, but that's just speculation. One frame in the middle of a roll has a weird number on it - like a tag of some sort. The film effects shown on the DR5 site (scala look, etc) matched some film types, but others not so much.

So the combination of bad communication, slow turn-around, arrogant attitude of the owner and lack of quality control all have made me decide that I'll stick with traditional B&W processing. It simply wasn't work the hassle an increased expense of DR5.

Again, this is just my experience. I'm sure they have many happy customers.

Mark

 

[MikeSeb]

The owner of DR5's a participant around these parts, so perhaps you, or we, will hear from him.

 

[Chazzy]

By taking this public, you have to realize that it will only be fair to let DR5 tell their side of the story. Frankly, I think it would have been better if you had attempted to settle the matter privately before broadcasting your criticism in a public forum.

 

[Thomas Bertilsson]

I agree. Did you explain your pain points above in an email to Dave?

 

[thebanana]

Public floggings should be banned.

 

[Athiril]

If thats the customer service he received I dont really blame him.

And I disagree thebanana, people should be able to discuss their experiences with x service/product/company etc, without being persecuted for the big bad 'vendor verdict' or even have that sort of thing banned off public forums.

Yes, reputation can make or break business, therefore that is exactly why it should be allowed, I dislike businesses or forums pushing for tight lips on their service, they should instead invest their efforts not in keeping things private and secret, but maintaining a good reputation.

 

[MikeSeb]

Sounds like he did try to work it out privately. I thought the OP's plaint was reasonable and measured in tone.

And DR5's owner posts here. I'm sure he'll pipe up if he has anything to say in reply.

 

[JBrunner]

The biggest thing missing in this scenario is a simple phone call. Often just a few moments on the phone can straighten most things out, particularly communication difficulties.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

Posted wirelessly..

The biggest thing missing in this scenario is a simple phone call. Often just a few moments on the phone can straighten most things out, particularly communication difficulties.

I have to agree with jbrunner. My sense from this post and similar posts about DR5 and from David Wood's own responses online is that maybe David is not an e-mail kind of guy, but I've walked into his lab when it was in New York, and he seemed perfectly cordial and enthusiastic to talk about his process and share his passion for film, and I could tell that he had a good relationship with the regular clients who came in while I was browsing through the samples on his lightboxes.

If you want to work in traditional photographic processes, you have to be able to work with people who don't like doing everything through the computer, and if you don't, you're missing out on many great products, services, and above all personalities and the deep culture of the community of analogue photography.

 

[dr5chrome]

here we go again..

Mark, sorry you are having all of these issues. I fail to understand why you never contacted us 1st [by phone]? Was this by design?

1st I can only ask patients of clients when our conditions are such that our turn time exceeds the posted on our website. It is a juggle between quality, little or very high volumes. In this case, very high volumes. We do the best we can.

EMAIL. The communication problem by email was you not us. Your email was not working, at least on our end, we did try to work around it.

PAYMENT; again this issue is conveniently left out of the complaint. Because Mr. Olwick's email was not working and my assistant tried to call [no answer], his order was delayed because his CC declined. This was the 'bulk' of his 'delay'.

SHIPPING; at the time we sent your package we had missed pick-ups for FEDEX ground, we do-not use UPS. we sent your order USPS-signature: 420981039121805213907122497313. If you did not get the track notice, again, this is a problem with your email, this track info comes direct from USPS.

The "on-line" comments are a pointless reply.

Arrogant comments, again... how is it that, helping is received as arrogant :confused: When did this ever occur? Please explain... I am not an arrogant person.

I will make the point again here that we are not perfect, no one is.
I will not have film run unless our line is "SPOT-ON". This is the bulk of our service delays, like it or not. I WILL NOT soup film if our line is off, I don't care how badly you want your order or how loud the complaint is. Quality is our #1 priority, period.

Mr. Olwick, as far as your films quality, id have to see it to make a judgment, but we have had no service issues during this time. I do have notes on this order about 'old film use', poor exposure, incorrect exposure for the film type in dr5 & protecting your film against fogging,, but I wont try to embarrass you as you have tried to do to us on this public forum.
If by some small chance there was a problem on our end Id be happy to rectify it.

We do help clients with additional free testing that cant get it right the 1st time, but I don't think this is your intention.

regards.

www.dr5.com :confused:

Okay, first things first: I know that many people have had good luck with the DR5 B&W slide process. The featured gallery on APUG by Gavin Smith used DR5. I'm just sharing what happened to me because, when I was researching them, I couldn't find much information.

I sent off 6 rolls of various B&W films for processing to DR5. This was a mixture of films, all chosen by studying the DR5 site film comparison, so I could see the effect of the process on each for myself. All were medium format (either 645 or 6x7).

Their site said that they run their film in batches, normally every 3-5 days. No problem there. I sent it FedEx so I could track it from the day they recieved it and specified UPS Ground for the return shipping.

After a week of no communication I started to get a bit concerned. Then another week passed. I started to get worried that they weren't in business any more. They don't have an online ordering system. You have to write your credit card info down on the paper order form, so I started to get worried about fraud. I use a special credit card for my online purchases, so I transferred the money that I had on that card to another account, just to be safe. After 2.5 weeks, I got a decline message, so I e-mailed them back to let them know that I reenabled it and to ship it.

Again, no shipment confirmation at all. After a few days I finally used the alternate mail address on their site to see if it had been shipped back. I got a somewhat nasty e-mail from David, the owner, telling me that I needed to "fix" my e-mail. I use hotmail, so I ensured that I had them on my Safe list and let David know. He replied that they had problems with their customers who use hotmail and that I should be calling hotmail to get them to fix it. To me, if a business is losing customers due to this it would be the business wanting to get this resolved, not the responsibility of the customer.

Finally after 3 weeks I get a message from the POST OFFFICE that I had something to pick up. Weird. When I do, I find that it's my DR5 film. This despite specifying that I wanted UPS Ground.

Okay, aside from all that, how was the film? Some were okay, others were truly bad. Lots of spots on two rolls. Another roll had brown spots on it - I'm guessing that maybe some of the DR2 process got on it somehow, but that's just speculation. One frame in the middle of a roll has a weird number on it - like a tag of some sort. The film effects shown on the DR5 site (scala look, etc) matched some film types, but others not so much.

So the combination of bad communication, slow turn-around, arrogant attitude of the owner and lack of quality control all have made me decide that I'll stick with traditional B&W processing. It simply wasn't work the hassle an increased expense of DR5.

Again, this is just my experience. I'm sure they have many happy customers.

Mark

 

[seanmophoto]

this doesn't seem like a public flogging at all, but an honest review of a vendor...I don't see why this should be off limits or even a problem
people should be able to post their experiences with vendors...as long as its not bashing or unreasonable...this post seems like neither to me

I've thought about using dr5 myself...but their website is extremely confusing and the process for sending stuff in seems odd as well

while its true that analog photo folks are less likely to use computers...they also need to adapt to keep customers happy who do

 

[jmooney]

Posted wirelessly..



I have to agree with jbrunner. My sense from this post and similar posts about DR5 and from David Wood's own responses online is that maybe David is not an e-mail kind of guy, but I've walked into his lab when it was in New York, and he seemed perfectly cordial and enthusiastic to talk about his process and share his passion for film, and I could tell that he had a good relationship with the regular clients who came in while I was browsing through the samples on his lightboxes.

If you want to work in traditional photographic processes, you have to be able to work with people who don't like doing everything through the computer, and if you don't, you're missing out on many great products, services, and above all personalities and the deep culture of the community of analogue photography.

I have to beg to differ on this one David. If a company is going to list an email address on their website then they need to make full use of it to communicate with their customers. If you don't want to deal with e-mail that don't make an address available. To me having an email address for your business and not using it is the same as not answering the phone.

If anything I think email is more convenient that phone for me and a business owner. I have a lot of trouble making phone calls, I work a help desk during the day and I have two young (read loud) children, a bird, a dog at home. I can zip off a short email for work or from sitting on the couch feeding the baby with one hand and typing with the other. As to a business owner, they don't have to drop what they're doing to answer email as they would a phone and can take the time to answer a question properly.

Just my .02.

 

[seanmophoto]

and dr5...your comments in your response do come across as arrogant to me...tone in online responses can be a tricky thing

 

[Lee L]

A couple of technical points that might pertain.

A high percentage of spam email has used spoofed hotmail addresses. This is common enough that some mail servers in the past have been set up to block all email that originates or claims to originate from hotmail.

Having numbers show up in the middle of a rollfilm frame is most often a case of light printing through the backing paper and showing up as partial exposure of the film. Check for any light leaks in your roll film back or at any red window used for positioning the frame numbers correctly. Faded red or orange frame number windows can easily 'print through' some current backing papers onto the film. It's happened to me.

Lee

"...misunderstandings and neglect create more confusion in this world than trickery and malice. At any rate, the last two are certainly much less frequent."
Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther, 1774

 

[Bob Carnie]

Like DR5 we accept work from abroad and try to balance out quality as number one , and then speed/service.
We have made mistakes and try to solve any issues asap.
One thing we have noticed lately is some clients sending in film that is outdated, different emulsions, so curled that in some cases we could not roll onto the reels. In-consistant exposure seems to also be a trend.
For us we do batch runs which mean the same time, same temp, one shot chemistry. When we get every type of film , known to mankind for a single order it is very difficult to explain that we do not soup them all together and eventually we piss off potential clients that think our prices are outrageous.
Years ago this problem would not even show itself as labs were running huge amounts of daily film and this in itself would help quality and turnaround.

I feel for Dave in this situation , as it has happened to me, and the OP may have his points, but airing them out here is painful to watch and not benificial to this Forum IMHO, as DR5 is a good company with lots of loyal customers.

For Canadian businesses the whole shipping issue is a real PIA and we have not solved this problem area.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

I have to beg to differ on this one David. If a company is going to list an email address on their website then they need to make full use of it to communicate with their customers. If you don't want to deal with e-mail that don't make an address available. To me having an email address for your business and not using it is the same as not answering the phone.

As I see it, businesses that post an e-mail address but just aren't good about e-mail are often trying their best, but just haven't gotten up to speed or aren't really acclimated to an e-commerce environment. Without naming names I'd say this is true of many of the best dealers and services in the analogue photo world. If we want what they have to offer, we need to be flexible and sensitive listeners and figure out how to work with them, and often that means writing a letter, making a phone call, or visiting in person.

 

[bob100684]

Seems kind of shocking, the only negative experience I had with DR5 was my own fault for sending things in a soft mailer, the end cap of a roll of lucky film popped off.

 

[jforney]

I agree a simple phone call would have been the best approach.

I have been a paying customer of DR5 for atleast 5 years. David has gone above and beyond many times. When I was new to his process he took the time to work with me and establish several film reciprocity failure charts. The list goes on and on.

Next time just pick up the phone.

 

[Bob-D659]

One thing you always have to remember, is email is NOT really a reliable form of communication. Data is easily corrupted by dropped packets, internal errors in switches, routers and relay machines. It is also subject to major delays or just being deleted after the second retry if a receiving server is busy when a sending server tries to log on. On more that one occasion I've had email sit in a queue on a relay server for a week because a routing table in a switch was corrupted. At least it didn't delete it after 3 retries.

Add to this that most desktop computers have no error checking in them except when data is written to a hard drive. Your email could be corrupted before it gets out of your computer and you would never know.

To put this in a little perspective, it your computer you are reading this on has a data transfer error rate of 1 per ten billion, a 250 gig drive could be expected to have at least 250 errors embedded in the data stored on it. Even if the error rate dropped to 1bit per terabyte on a large network, you are going to end up with a lot of bad data on the receiving end.

 

[CBG]

I'm not sure why the original poster was worried after only one week. My labs don't work that fast when I am just mailing stuff to them. Seems a bit premature. I'd give a bit more time before I got my blood pressure up.

 

[dr5chrome]

ok... If you are an English teacher maybe you can make some legit points on how you came to this conclusion. How would you reply to un-truths about your business?

and dr5...your comments in your response do come across as arrogant to me...tone in online responses can be a tricky thing

 

[hrst]

Email is really dead. It died in the beginning of 2000 so this is not a new issue at all. Email can't be trusted at all. You can thank all the spammers.

It can really be used only inside and maybe between universities; where it began. But that's it. Hotmail especially is very problematic, but not the only problematic one. Don't use email, or make a call "did you get my email?" if you use.

I agree that public comments on any business are needed. Good and bad, if they are proper and honest. If bad comments were banned, you would need to ban the good ones also.

Now we got many many good comments again. It's better to have people know your name.

 

[olwick]

By taking this public, you have to realize that it will only be fair to let DR5 tell their side of the story. Frankly, I think it would have been better if you had attempted to settle the matter privately before broadcasting your criticism in a public forum.

Actually I did. I sent them multiple mails.

 

[olwick]

The biggest thing missing in this scenario is a simple phone call. Often just a few moments on the phone can straighten most things out, particularly communication difficulties.

I agree - that's why I called too, but got voice mail. I left my call back number as well (plus it was on my order form).

No response.

 

[Mahler_one]

But dear fellow members here-how is any person able to respond when a possible falsehood is promulgated? The information-legit or not-is already there, and one is put in the very uncomfortable position of having to respond to comments that might be completely wrong, but yet are already in front of thousands of people.

I wonder if it might be possible if such comments about businesses where personal "honor" is at stake might be more properly vetted through one of the moderators here where the critical comments can be received, and an immediate rebuttal from those who are the subjects of such comments can be posted in sequence. Somehow it seems very unfair for critical comments to be posted when the subject of such comments might not know of such remarks for some hours before having the opportunity to respond. When the subject receiving such criticism finally notes that he/she is the subject of harsh words, how in the world can that person respond without appearing to be very upset and angry. I'm not sure of how the logistics of such "complaints and responses" can be fairly done, but it seems to me that the present "system" on APUG can lead to manipulation and unfair advantage. Please note that I have no knowledge of who is right or wrong concerning the issue in question. However, I do feel that dr5 should have known of any adverse public comments the moment such were being posted, and that such post should not have been made without dr5 having the opportunity to have had an immediate rebuttal on hand.