Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Are You There Fuji? It's Me, Kristi.

For as much as I love to read reviews, I don't write them often. Once in a while I will get on yelp and just go for it and review every place I've had a positive or negative experience. For the most part, however, I just go with the flow, I don't murky the water.

But this time, things have gone too far.

As you may recall, on our recent cruise I had the chance to go scuba diving. It. Was. Awesome. In preparation for the occasion I purchased an underwater camera from amazon. I wasn't expecting amazing, award-winning photographs, I just wanted a simple keepsake to show posteriety.

Blaine has been gone a lot lately. Usually Wednesday afternoons through late Friday evenings. Usually by about Friday afternoon things would be falling apart and I would be at my wits end. By Friday nights we are usually in full meltdown, myself included.

It was on one such Friday night about three weeks ago that I took my underwater camera to be developed. I had first talked to Walgreens. They could have it done in an hour, but the cost was $12, a little steep for my taste. I was close to Wal-Mart anyways so I took my camera there. Turns out Wal-Mart was the same price and it would take three days to be developed. Since I wasn't in a particular hurry to get my pictures and since gouging my own eyeballs out with a pencil sounded preferable to taking my kids back to Walgreens, I just dropped my pictures off, with the promise that they would be back by Tuesday afternoon.

Tuesday afternoon came and went. Wednesday, Thursday ("sorry they must be delayed from the holiday"). Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday....they placed a call, apparently my camera order had never gone through. They put it in again, it should be back within a day or two. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday...she places a call in to Fuji who says their machine was broken when the placed the order, she'll place it again, it should be in within an hour. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday....she calls again and apparently they had just canceled my order for no apparent reason. So finally, two weeks and change late, I get a call that my pictures were in. I was a little peeved, but they said there wouldn't be a charge, so...whatever. I get my pictures tonight and the majority of them look like this...


and some like this
and a couple like this
Now.
I'm no professional, but using an underwater camera is not exactly brain surgery, is it? So I figured there must have been a problem with the processing. No worries, they gave me a disc. So I pop in the disc, and to my surprise see the major quality difference. The pictures on my disc look like this...


Now, I saw many things in the crystal clear waters of Cozumel, but I did not see these people. In fact, I've never seen these people.

So, I can't decide who I should be more frustrated with. Wal-Mart? Fuji (the developer)? Fujifilm (maker of the camera)? Needless to say I am kind of frustrated with them all, and I kind of wish I had one of those blogs that was popular enough that someone at Fuji would come across it and send me awesome things to compensate for them being dumb. And maybe send me on another trip to Cozumel, where I would be certain to buy a different brand of underwater camera so that I could have something by which to remember my once-in-a-lifetime experience by. Oh and I would be certain to get it developed at Walgreens.




3 comments:

Becky said...

Laughed out loud reading that. Sorry about the ordeal, though. Definitely frustrating. And one more reason to boycott Walmart.

Strong Family - said...

I had almost the exact same thing happen to me!!! Dropped it off at Walmart and they sent it on to Fuji to be developed. It got "lost" and it was weeks before I finally got them. They were not as bad as yours, but still really fuzzy and not great quality at all. I will NEVER be buying a Fuji disposable again.

M said...

Someone I used to work for always said that if I drove under a bridge and it fell down he would blame the bridge builder. Unless bridges always fell down when I drove under them. In that case, somehow it must be my fault. So I always blame Walmart.