New Minimum Service Charge Introduced

With some reluctance we’ve decided to introduce a minimum service charge of £35. Why?

Well, if you look at the invoices we’ve raised across the last 20 years the vast majority are substantially in excess of that, so most clients won’t be impacted by this. However … I think we’re being taken advantage of and incidences of this are rising, I’m sorry to say. here are a couple of examples.

Recently a chap got in contact who’d emailed me previously asking me to honour the earlier off we’d made. That offer was to scan six slides, free, as a test. OK, I said. His reply? I’m sending you ten so just invoice him for four. And the date of the first email? 2012.

A young lady asked me if she could deliver some prints by hand. No problem, she promised she’d be here around 11:00 one morning. Sadly she had a domestic issue and she rang to say she couldn’t be here in the morning, but she’d come over after collecting her kid from a local school. No show. In the evening, around 20:00, she knocked on the door with the prints saying she needed them the next day so could I scan them now? Idiot me did, go out to The Hutch, switch everything on, scan the photos and scanned them – 12 prints. As I handed over the CD with the images she said she was most grateful, before contacting me she’d tried “everybody else” and they all wanted much more than £1-20. I did feel I’d been used.

So that’s why we now have a minimum charge. Yes, it’s entirely selfish and we’re doing it to deter an enormous number of tiny jobs, and also as a reflection of the clients who bring us these tiddlers who are far more demanding than people who send in thousands of prints, slides or negatives. For them it will have no impact at all.

One final reason, all too often it just isn’t worth invoicing someone for scanning one negative, two slides or six or seven prints. Frequently we do, particularly when return mail by a Signed For service costs £2 to £3. Sadly a very high percentage of those bills don’t get paid.