Leica WhiteWall printing for Leica Monochrom

[dalethorn]

I ordered a print from WhiteWall in early September. I followed up a few times but they responded only twice - once to say Baryta paper was difficult to work with, and the second time on Oct. 2 to say my print was shipped. Yesterday after not receiving the print and wondering what happened, I found the package tracing button and tracked it, only to see that there was no attempt to deliver it. The tracking showed that the package was "Held at FedEx location for recipient pickup", then a few days after that "Destroyed at customer's request". And still I have no communication from WhiteWall. I think this is a ridiculous way to do business, and I'm out about $50 unless I can cancel the credit card payment.

 

[Brian]

I suspect the credit card will side with you as the vendor ordered your property to be destroyed! I won't try whitewall printing.

 

[dalethorn]

The Leica U.S. main office contacted Whitewall and Whitewall reprinted it - the print finally arrived in early December. It didn't look bad by any means, but in removing the print from the cardboard tube (shipped from Germany) the paper was heavy, but rather bland in texture and finish as far as I could see. The Baryta paper they used might have looked better if the image were slightly over-sharpened.

 

[asiafish]

I did one and it came out great. Whitewall quoted 40 days from order to delivery, but I had the print in 9.

 

[Mijo]

How's Whitewall compare to Ilford, in terms of print quality? I haven't had any of my digital images professionally printed but I'm seriously considering have a couple of larger prints made for family members.

 

[dalethorn]

I did one and it came out great. Whitewall quoted 40 days from order to delivery, but I had the print in 9.

My issue with Whitewall isn't that they were slow, it was that they told Fedex to destroy the empty box that Fedex received, then not only did they not notify me at the email address where I ordered it, they didn't respond to my followup emails.

 

[asiafish]

My issue with Whitewall isn't that they were slow, it was that they told Fedex to destroy the empty box that Fedex received, then not only did they not notify me at the email address where I ordered it, they didn't respond to my followup emails.

Dale,

I read the thread and am aware of the problem you had. Just chiming in that my experience with them was very different. Shipping is VERY expensive on these, as you know, so I can see why they would want it destroyed rather than returned. And yes, they should have contacted you. If I recall, email and telephone information are part of the order process, so it would have been very easy for them to just email you. In fact, they emailed me twice, once on order receipt and again when shipping.

 

[dalethorn]

Dale, I read the thread and am aware of the problem you had. Just chiming in that my experience with them was very different. Shipping is VERY expensive on these, as you know, so I can see why they would want it destroyed rather than returned. And yes, they should have contacted you. If I recall, email and telephone information are part of the order process, so it would have been very easy for them to just email you. In fact, they emailed me twice, once on order receipt and again when shipping.

My purpose in posting my experience wasn't to be rhetorical, it was to notify possible customers of what they might encounter unless Leica U.S. somehow fixed the problem for future orders, but I haven't heard anything to that effect as yet.