A quick shout out...
Friday, August 1, 2008 at 05:33PM I've vented here about poor customer service in the past so figured today I'd do a quick shout out to Camillo at my local Sam's Club for his outstanding assistance today!
Here's the story. I generally print my pictures at home. I took 816 pictures last week on vacation. I'm going to a crop tomorrow and have this crazy idea of trying to actually scrap the entire vacation. So. I decided that printing the pictures at Sam's Club would be more efficient and inexpensive overall. I sorted and cropped and arranged all the pictures into 8x10 collages (28 of them), figuring that will be easier to deal with than sizing all the pictures individually and printing them that way. I did this in Photoshop and know for a fact that each file was sized appropriately (8x10 at 300 dpi). With me so far?
So. I go to upload them to Sam's Club photo website. I've always been fairly happy with my prints from Sam's (love that I can pick them up locally...my Sam's is moments away). I've never been thrilled with their website interface. Usually, though, I'm only doing 4x6 prints and it's aggravating (download time, navigating the shopping cart, etc) but doable. This time, though, trying to order 8x10 prints, it kept telling me that these images were going to need to be cropped. Now, I knew they shouldn't need to be cropped since I made them just the right size, right? But. I went along with it and tried to crop them like it asked. Wouldn't crop to include the entire image. Argh.
Finally I gave up and burned them all to CD and decided to just take them to the store and load them on those machines there and have them printed while I shopped. Needed to go there anyhow. It's all going fine until we got to the store...the two machines that did one hour printing uploads were both occupied. They're hardly ever being used when I go there. I've never seen both in use at the same time. Sigh. So, the boys and I settle in to wait. (Yes, I know we could have proceeded to do our shopping and then come back, but then I'd have needed to come back an hour later and getting three boys in an out of the van when it's nearly 100 degrees outside isn't the most fun thing in the world.)
Anyhow, apparently, though, both of the women using the machines didn't do any sort of cropping or prepping ahead of time and had a year's worth of pictures to go through one by one or something. (Yes, I recognize and appreciate that it is their right and privilege to use these machines at their pace and all that, but seriously folks, it's just common courtesy in my humble opinion to do some of the prep work at home so that you're not at the machine for more than 30 minutes.) Still. The boys and I were doing our best to wait patiently. Honestly, they were very good.
Where does Camillo come in? Well, after we'd been waiting there for about 20 minutes playing "rock, paper, scissors" and the like, he waved me over. He seemed to recognize that I knew what I was doing and asked if my pictures were all ready. I explained my website story and he nodded sympathetically. (He's not a fan of the site either and gave me an 800 number for future "help" reference.) He then ushered me past the "employees only" blockade thing and loaded my images directly to his computer, letting me stand there to ensure that we had the size and cropping correct and that everything downloaded right. With my order successfully entered, (the other two ladies were still at the machines with a couple more people still waiting also, btw) the boys and I headed over to the food court to get some ice cream for them for their patience. (We'd been at the photo area for about 30 minutes overall.) While at the food court, Camillo came over to refill his drink and let me know that my order was almost done. Dude. If I'd had a gift basket or something in my purse, I'd have given it to him. Really.
So, that's my "quick" shout out to Camillo. Thank you from the bottom of my heart! You made what could have been a very long experience at Sam's Club into something so much better and I totally appreciate that you went that extra mile to help me when you could have simply let me wait in line. You rock!
Reader Comments (2)
How sweet!!! Good people should definitely be noticed and thanked appropriately!
Wow! That was wonderful help. I think Camillo went above and beyond.
Yes, I do agree about being prepared when you go to those kiosk.
Before I even step foot into Costco for photo printing, I actually go through the pictures I want to develop and write down their "number" or jpg files and what size I want it made, that way, I don't have to "blow" up every tiny pictures to find out which of the 50 shots of my son blowing his candles that I want printed.
I think it makes everything faster and easier for everybody.