My summary statement: bargain basement quality for boutique prices. This place chaps my ass for so many reasons. Let me elaborate and hopefully save you a similar fate:
I took a 16x20 B&W photo in for framing 2 months ago. My initial impression of the customer service was quite good. The owner of the shop was professional, patient and very helpful in helping me pick out a frame that I really liked. I choked down the $345 bill (3x the value of the actual photograph) and chalked it up to a "nice splurge." My photo was going to look really, really great once it was professionally framed, right? Three weeks later, I excitedly hurry in to pick up my framed photo and my jaw drops upon seeing it. No, not because it looked so breathtakingly beautiful in its $345 frame but because the frame color is many shades darker than what I had picked out!!! I chose a nice espresso walnut stained wood and the frame on my photo looks BLACK!! If I wanted black, I would've chosen black. The clerk (someone else than who had originally helped me) looks at me blankly and can't seem to understand why I'm unhappy. I hmmmm and hahhhhh and finally decide that at least I'll take the damn thing home and put it up on the wall to give it a fair shake. Perhaps it'll look lighter in my sun-flooded living room. I throw the thing under my arm and schlep it home 5 blocks, put it up on the wall and.......sweet Jesus! There sitting smack dab in the middle of the beautiful deep black sky of my photo is a piece of glass glinting back at me. So now I'm REALLY pissed, throw the thing back under my arm and storm back up to Fillmore Street. The clueless clerk apologizes half-heartedly and tells me she can "put a rush on it" and get it back to me in 3 days. This doesn't even take into account the fact that frame is the wrong color. One would think that for $345, this place could get it right. Nope. Guess again.
So, I go and talk to the owner a few days later. The glass has been removed and he offers to send it back to the mysterious off-site warehouse to have it reframed with wood that actually matches the sample I had picked out. Fine. What's another 3 weeks? They call me 3 weeks later, but not a single thing has been done to my photo. They simply want me to come into the shop to verify that the frame sample "looks okay" before they send it back out. Why couldn't they have done this 3 weeks ago? I go in and the sample looks identical to the wood that is already on my photo---too dark!!! What's the point in sending it back if it'll look exactly the same? As I'm holding on to the frame to make sure that there are no more shards of glass wedged underneath the glass, I notice that the photo and mat now seem to shift around within the frame and there's this huge gap between the mat and the photo. The clerk (a third person now) dismisses my concern and snootily tells me, "There's supposed to be extra space within the frame. The photo shouldn't be flush against the mat." Huhhh???? My next move: seeking a full refund for this incredibly shoddy job. How can these people charge an arm and a leg for such crappy, unprofessional work?! Save yourself the hassle and the $$$ and go to Cheap Pete's. I wish I had. read more