Basically, I received 12 vouchers, 2 for each month (total 6 months), with each voucher allowing me to redeem 30 or 31 4R prints. (It was supposed to be 1 voucher per month for 12 months, but because Nokia sent my vouchers some 6 months late, they offered 2 per month to catch up in the remaining 6 months, so that’s fine with me.) To redeem the 4R prints, I just had to present this voucher to any participating print shop to get my soft-copy photos printed.
The Photo Finish shop at Bukit Panjang Plaza (BPP) is one of the nearer ones to my home. Every time I visited the outlet to get my prints, there is this particular very unhappy staff who serves me. She looks at the voucher, turns it over, and inspects it as if suspecting it was counterfeit. Then, she presents a variety of hurdles.
The first time, she said I’m suppose to redeem one voucher per month only. That’s true for the ordinary case. But my circumstances were different, and not that it mattered anyway. I am holding two vouchers, so obviously I should be allowed to redeem both. In fact, how the extra voucher came to me is irrelevant eh: Someone could have given me theirs, or I could be redeeming on behalf of a friend, etc. Anyway, after a short argument, she reluctantly agreed. Then she remarked that the vouchers were expiring on that day. I stared at her and told her off: “The day is not yet over.” I had brought along all my 60 photos on one USB thumb drive, which I presented to her.
Oh next problem: One voucher one thumb drive, I am not allowed to combine the photos for two vouchers into one thumb drive. Strange woman. So I asked, can I then use the self-service kiosk to print 30 photos at a time then? After all, it could well have been two different persons redeeming 30 prints each. She reluctantly conceded that this was permitted. So I tried to reason with her, how is this different from over-the-counter print? She stood her ground and refused to serve me. Ok fine, so I printed 30 at a time from the self-service kiosk.
In another incident, she told me the photos I wanted to print had to be taken from a N73 phone. (Yes, I had photos taken from other cameras, and some that were touched up in Photoshop, etc.) She was getting on my nerves. A voucher to print 4R photos should allow me to print anything I want. Nowhere were there any conditions stated that I had to use photos taken from a N73. So again, after a short argument and my insistence, she reluctantly agreed to the printing.
Then in yet another incident, she tells me that I have to upload the photos directly from my N73 to the self-service kiosk. (This despite how she previously accepted printing from my USB thumb drives.) She claimed these were the rules of the redemption. But these rules were not stated anywhere and I asked her to show it to me. Well she couldn’t (of course she couldn’t…). So, again after a short argument, she took my USB thumb drives.
I just cannot understand what is wrong with this woman. The way she is behaving is like the 4R print redemption is causing a great loss to her. But this is reimbursed by Nokia (and Kodak perhaps) isn’t it?