Hey Folks,

I know, I know, another photo from 4th street, downtown Anchorage. This was one of the later dog teams of the morning, towards the end of the teams, and they seemed mighty keen to make up for the late start. Right now they’re making their way across the frozen tundra of the Alaskan wilderness, and I bet they’re not quite pushing it as hard as they are here.

Anyway, rather than go on about the race, I want to get back to a subject I briefly mentioned the other day. Customer Service. Whilst a good rant about some lame-a** company who fails at every turn to offer reasonable support is good for the soul, it’s probably more important to throw a word out for those companies we do enjoy doing business with. For me, there are a few, and I’ll try to give a shout out to each as time goes by, but the first one I would like to mention is My Photo Pipe. The good people at this Atlanta, Georgia, store, formerly called Color Genesis, offer the best service around for prints and printing. I used to have them do my larger prints, while I did everything under 12″ x 18″ at home. After a lot of experimenting, and talking to Pete from My Photo Pipe, I figured it best to simply have them do all my prints. Their service is second to none. They’ve replaced prints for me that UPS lost, at no charge, they’ll redo any print I ask them to if it doesn’t pass my inspection (I’ve only had 1 print I’ve ever needed them to redo and it was for a very minor color adjustment), their service is always extremely prompt, personable, and helpful. The ship everything packed safely and securely so I don’t have to worry about prints being damaged. Recently I received an order for a few prints the day before I was heading to the woods for a couple of weeks. The print wasn’t paid for, but the lady assured me she would send the payment in a couple of days. I processed the images, uploaded the prints to their website and added a note, asking could they hold the order until I emailed them confirming they should go ahead with it, because I hadn’t been paid yet, but wanted to get the order online before I went in to the woods. Not a problem, they held the order what ended up being nearly 3 weeks before I got an electronic payment, and they shipped the order out on receiving an email from me. They checked in with me several times during the 3 weeks to make sure the order was still ‘on hold’.

Last year I was in Chile, and was able to sell prints via their service. I would never do this with a company whom I couldn’t trust, and didn’t have a personal relationship with. Because I’ve worked with the folks their for many years now, and because, being local to where I was living, I’d been in to their store numerous times, and worked hands on with them in getting my prints ‘just right’, I felt completely comfortable emailing them, uploading some files for printing, and knowing they’d deliver class prints to my clients. I’ve had them print images as large as 30″ x 40″ and the results are fantastic – they really do a killer job.

They’ve never let me down, and I’m so glad to have them on my side when I have to do any printing. Their prices are fantastic, and the quality of their work unsurpassed. But mostly, they’re just excellent to work with, and I really value how much trust they’ve created in our relationship over the years – I can send them a file and I know they’ll take care of it. I wish more businesses were like that.

Cheers

Carl