Ripped Off by Lab?

[Vautrin]

Hi,

So I just bought a holga and thought I'd shoot some 120 film for fun.

Don't really want to bother developing the film myself, I just wanted a lab I could send a roll of film to, and get back a CD with images.

Since it's 120 film I figured the images would be, well, huge.

So I find a local lab and get a quote, in email. 10 EUR a roll for developing and 5 EUR for scan + cost of DVD and shipping

I sent away 5 rolls and got back a bill for 300 EUR.

They charged me close to 60 EUR a roll because they charged me 5 EUR / image scanned.

To top it off the "scans" are 300kb jpgs -- even though it's a holga for 5eur a pic you'd think they'd be tiffs (this is what they sent back -- it's ektar 100 so i would have thought a much finer grain, am I wrong):

full size here: http://myhollandtravels.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/fontainbleu-holga-1-of-1.jpg


I understand it takes time and money but I would expect for a couple eur in developer he'd be getting a healthy profit margin, and a commercial film scanner should be pretty automated so I would have thought 15 EUR / roll was plenty. And at least if it were per scan I think I should have been quoted 50 a roll instead...

Is this just me or am I being ripped off?

What would a reasonable price be for these services?

And, more importantly, any recommendations for a new lab in europe?

 

[NateWagner]

Well, It does seem rather high to me, though to be safe it might have been better to get a quote in advance. That way you'd know what the quality would be, and perhaps more importantly what the price would come to.

 

[Vautrin]

Well that's what pisses me off. He quoted 5 EUR for scanning, then charged me 5 EUR a frame on the roll. Otherwise I never would have used them...

 

[Derrel]

You were clearly ripped off. If the cost of developing was quoted PER ROLL at 10 Euro and the cost of scanning was quoted at 5 Euro--it would be proper and normal to assume that the scanning charge was PER ROLL. Right? I think so!

I would seriously,seriously consider filing a claim against a merchant that pulled a stunt like that; if there is a "small claims court" in your area, I would file a case against them.

There is virtually NO WAY a 300k scan is worth 5 Euros!!!

 

[JohnMF]

i pay well under £10 (off the top of my head i think it is £6) for development of 120 colour film plus a cd of images. Much higher resolution than what you got also.

 

[Mike_E]

Might be time to rethink the investment in a darkroom.

 

[teneighty23]

thats a huge ripoff, London Drugs always has a large Discount when you get images scanned right when you take it in for developing, so that really helps. when i do that they charge about $5 a roll for developing, and $6 a roll for scanning to CD. i bought a film scanner...