During the past few weeks of getting a handful of really large prints mounted, matted, glassed and framed, I have come into contact with many photographic material vendors, good and bad. While a few experiences hardly make for a statistically meaningful sample, here are mine.

The Good:

B&H (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/) – though a huge company, which generally implies an uncaring attitude with those responsible hiding behind lawyers – the level of service and timely delivery from B&H is simply the best. I am on the West coast and it would be harder to be further away from their New York headquarters. But place an order on Sunday night and, sure as clockwork, it arrives the following Friday by UPS Ground. On site web ordering is superb, perpetual inventory tells you when an item is out of stock and on the couple of occasions I have had to reurn items, I was treated with courtesy (OK, New York courtesy, which is a little different) and my issue resolved timely. Simply the best.

Documounts (http://www.documounts.com/) – this is where I bought acid free mats and mounting board. They cut the mats to order and you can specify 1/32” accuracy for the cut out. My large order was prepared in seven days and at my California home, shipped from Oregon, three days later. The accuracy of cutting is beyond any criticism as was the professional packaging (just enough to keep everything safe without making it impossible to open). Mounts and mats are purely fungible – you want Nielsen Bainbridge archival, Google it and go for the lowest price. However, I could not find another vendor that does custom cutting and the price is competitive. A 22 x 28” mat with an 18 3/16” x 12 3/8” cut out (that’s how my Epson ink jet printer sizes a 13” x 19” nominal print) runs $24.33, including backing board and transparent protective sleeve for unframed display. Yes, you could cut these less yourself, mess with all the waste and blunt blades and equipment and on and on, but that suggests you should be in the mat cutting business rather than taking photographs.

Drytac Mounting Tissue (http://www.drytac.com/) – bare bones, two day delivery, no fancy packaging, but if you want dry mounting tissue fast and well priced, you cannot beat this supplier.

Poor Richard’s Press (www.poorrichards.com) – the local central California printer I used for my business cards and marketing brochures. Despite the down market name (something I told them they really need to change to attract the high margin carriage trade) the service I received from Paige Chamberlain in the Atascadero office was beyond compare, Do you know which way the address panel on a tri-fold should face to avoid having the thing get snarled up in the US Post Office’s machinery when the mailing is processed? Paige does. Throw in 30 minutes of free marketing advice, fast feedback on what I did wrong in the brochure, and email upload of changes and you have a business that wants your business. I like that.

Inkjetart (http://www.inkjetart.com/) – a business from which I have bought Epson and Lyson supplies for years. Easy web ordering, fast shipping and no sales tax, as it’s in Utah and I am not. As a general principle, anything which can withhold money from the greedy and incompetent in all branches of government is a good thing and a principle I hew to strongly, having done more than my bit to grease the pockets of the losers in Sacramento and points east. It doesn’t hurt to know that Utah is the second most beautiful place in the west. After California.

Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com) – yes, here’s another public business that cares about its customer. It’s where I bought my LaCie hard drives for storing all those scanned photographs. Quick delivery, always timely, always honest.

LaCie (http://www.lacie.com/) – I have five of their external Firewire Porsche design hard drives for my iMac. Two 250 gB for the photographs, two 80 gB for my music (all CDs have now been sold after ripping these to the drives using Apple’s iTunes – even PC unfortunates can get to use this superb application, in between rebooting now and then) and a fifth 80 gB as a back-up boot drive in case the internal one in the iMac blows up. A great product, unobtrusive, quiet and, when one arrived with a noisy bearing, replaced immediately no questions asked. Thank you LaCie for helping me sleep well at night, knowing my data is safe. Heck, I might even forgive you that dumb French name.

MacConnecction (http://www.macconnection.com/) – this is where I bought the iMacG5 to replace the iMac G4, needing the greater front end speed for loading those 300 mB files – 15 seconds vs. 120 on the G4. They are in New Hampshire which, in addition to housing one of America’s very best business schools in the guise of Amos Tuck, also meets the fundamental test of not giving my money for support of the crooks in Sacramento and their variously deviant constituencies in San Francisco. Two day delivery was just that and phone service was courteous and well informed.

Newegg (http://www.newegg.com/) – where I got the additional memory for the iMac G5. Thanks, Apple, but $200 vs. $400 for the additional effort of undoing three screws is the sort of remuneration rate I can live with. One of the ‘sticks’ (that’s what we hip dudes call memory, you know) I ordered was the wrong type (my fault) and exchange was easy with no questions asked.

Wow! That’s a lot of very good experiences – big ticket and small cost items represented. I wish I did have an interest in these businesses and could tell you that my recommendations are conflicted. Sadly I do not.

The Bad:

But, of course, there has to be a stinker, and this one’s a real Gorgonzola.

It’s called Light Impressions (http://www.lightimpressionsdirect.com), or Dark Depressions as I have come to think of them. Suffice it to say that a simple test order for five mats (standard sizes, not custom – quite why they accepted the order when they did not even have the goods in stock in the first place I have yet to determine) took seven weeks, cancellation of my payment, unreturned emails, and, when it finally arrived, was wrapped by some druggie in the sub-basement who determined that using two miles of Scotch tape should do the trick. Try to open that without damaging the fragile contents. To add insult to injury, these yo-yos use the USPS for deliver, who in typical fashion, managed to hold the package in their Bell, California center for two weeks. Presumably they then found it behind the radiator in the back and deigned to ship it. Another business giving my money to the government. And before you tell me that the USPS is a private corporation, dear reader, who do you think will be on the hook when they go bust?

Anyway, just to complete the picture, here’s the feedback form I sent Dark Depressions when I finally received the goods – a cross in the right hand column qualifies the vendor for the IRS Bedside Manner Award:

But there’s good in such bad experiences. Dark Depressions’s pretty catalog, shipped with the mats, clued me into lots of neat framing tools and supplies which I can find elsewhere on the web at 20% less.