More problems with Light Impressions

Thanks for the kind words about my company. I am glad that we have been able to help you. Jerold, I will certainly be printing your post out and sharing it with my shipping crew.

I am not a lawyer, but it is my understanding that according to the Federal Trade Commission you are supposed to ship items within 30 days after payment is received.

I know many companies charge your card when you place an order on their website and it is legal to do so assuming you will be shipping promptly. It was actually a hassle for me not to do that with my company. Our website just does an authorization and we actually submit the charge when we ship. Sometime we will charge early for various reasons such as a deposit for material being ordered.

I do everything I can to avoid being out of stock but sometimes it does happen. If one of my suppliers has issue maintaining inventory then I will either switch to a different supplier increase my stock level. The longest I have ever had an item go out of stock was a couple months and that was because our suppliers had no product in the US and it was being manufactured overseas. It can take up to 3 months to import product but usually our suppliers already had an order in the queue before running out of stock domestically.

Cheers,
Mark

Jerold, about the mat, we will offering 4-ply Bainbridge Alpharag mat board in a number of colors very soon. We are in the process of uploading data and testing the website so it should be live in a week or two.

Cheers,
Mark

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Originally Posted by jeroldharter

...I am not yet sold on the Alphamat 4-ply board as a replacement for the Exeter Conservation board at LI. I am only about 1/5 done framing so far so I am still sorting it out. The board is very good but requires much more frequent blade changes on the mat cutter. I should be doing that anyway, I suppose. That is my only complaint.

So two enthusiastic thumbs up for Frame Destinations as a replacement for Light Impressions. I will use them again.

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I got the sense the ship was sinking a year ago when I attempted to order two grand worth of binders. Needless to say said binders were not available. Nonetheless, the sales person attempted to take my order info and c.c. #. I declined. Finally gave up on them after checking availability over the course of the following six months. It's a shame since L.I., while priced a bit higher than their competitors, had a few unique items unavailable anywhere else. I now do all my shopping with archival methods which works great if you're on the east coast (low cost, fast shippping).

I have never used Light Impressions, but over the time I have been in APUG I have never seen a kind word said about them. If you are a member of APUG you should know to never waste you time or money on Light Impressions.

If they have not shipped after 30 days, contact the credit card company by mail and cancel the charge. If enough people do that then Light Impressions will either get the message, which I doubt, or they will accelerate going out of business.

Steve

I buy stuff from Freestyle and they are a class act where they only charge your card when they ship your back ordered items.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sirius Glass

I have never used Light Impressions, but over the time I have been in APUG I have never seen a kind word said about them. If you are a member of APUG you should know to never waste you time or money on Light Impressions.

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I used to buy from them a few years ago, but it was still an East Coast operation and was never an issue. Once the company changed hands and moved to the West Coast, it changed. The new owner took a good company and ruined it's reputation with terrible service and no inclination to improve it.

Got an order in from FDI and all I can say is keep up the good work. Great products and service.

Jim

Someone called us to place an order yesterday. They needed 20 16x20 mat boards. Light Impressions told them they could not guarantee that they could fill the order by January. That company is history. We could fill the order the same day, if it came in early enough in the day.

I am sure Frame Destinations provides excellent service, but Lodima is also a sponsor of APUg and I ask you folks to take a look at our web site www.lodimaarchivalmaterials for your mat board needs. We have no minimum orders and our prices for most items are significantly lower than elsewhere. Since we are photographers ourselves we can make recommendations regarding sizes, print positioning, and anything else you need advice on.

Although it is not on our web site, we can also supply Nielsen metal section frames--any style, any size, any color. No minimums. We can also supply acrylic glazing, although often it is cost effective for you to get that locally.

We get more customers through photo.net than through APUG, which is a mystery to me, as I have not been to photo.net in over 10 years--long before we existed as lodimaarchivalmaterials.

We're also Lodima Press--producing the finest reproduced photography books published today. No one else publishes books in 600-line screen quadtone. www.lodimapress.com

We're dedicated to excellence in everything we do. At least take a look at our very easy to navigate web site. Thanks.

Michael A. Smith

http://www.lodimaarchivalmaterials.com

I checked the site again, this is the address, just added the .com.

What is the shipping like for full sheets of 32x40 white to the West Coast, single or multiple sheets? I like what I see.

Curt


I received your email today and I am looking forward to the next Brett Weston book.

Shipping costs depends on the weight. How many sheets would you want? It makes no sense to get one sheet as shipping would be prohibitive on a per unit basis. Best would be to get as many sheets as possible--an entire box would be ideal--that way the shipping would be minimal per board.

But we can cut boards down for you for very little additional. I checked our prices and I see that for 4 16x20s, for example, the additional charge on a per 32x40 sheet is only 62 cents. I can't believe that figure myself. That means for our labor in cutting 4 16x20s from a 32 x 40 board we only make 62 cents more than if we just shipped the board uncut. Can you cut it for less than 62 cents?

And shipping 32 x 40 is expensive. Probably very expensive. It would be an oversize package. It would go on a "dimensional weight" calculation where the minimum weight is high (41 pounds), even if you got only one board. So, unless you are mounting prints on the entire 32x40 sheet, my suggestion is to let us cut it for you.

We are going to be doing a major board cutting on Tuesday, so if you could place an order by Monday that would be very helpful to us and would insure prompt delivery.

We have just purchased a guillotine. But we do not have it yet and are building an addition to a building to house it. Because we have some large orders, on Tuesday we are driving to a friends location where he has a guillotine. We do this rarely. Usually we cut boards one at a time. Painful to us. Something that should take 10 minutes can take us a couple of hours. But we have kept our prices as if we already had the guillotine. So, if you want to purchase our board and can place your order by Monday, that would be most helpful. We'll cut the board on Tuesday and ship it on Wednesday. Thanks.

And we can cut overmats for you, too, on our computerized overmat cutter. And still get your order out on Wednesday.

And we can include your Brett Weston book in the shipment, saving you the shipping cost for that.

Michael A. Smith