customer service

I probably should not launch in on a complaint about poor customer service, since I've been a Customer Service Representative before and I know how annoying it is to deal with angry customers. However. I feel justified - perhaps a little too justified - in ranting and raving for a brief moment.

For the past few days I've been trying to choose from the many wedding pictures and decide which will go in an album, which will be printed to hang on the wall, and which are just not great enough to worry about. Since each photo will be paid for individually (I think that was rather shady of the photographer), I want to be able to look closely so I can tell the quality of a particular photo - specifically, whether or not my eyes are closed. Besides the images being ultra-compressed for web viewing, they also have the photographer's logo as a watermark in approximately the middle of the image. I do understand that this is to prevent theft, and to ensure the photographer gets his rightful compensation (I think it is far from rightful and he is doing nothing but ripping off people who have no choice but to buy the images from him, through the Pictage website).

So. This is all leading to the fact that this morning, my pictures are not being displayed. I can't say if this is due to changes being made on the event website by the photographer, or if Pictage's server is having difficulties. Whatever the reason, I was frustrated enough to send a message to Pictage's customer service. Of course, there is a drop-down list for email subjects, so that they can easily see what the issue is. I picked the closest I could come to my problem: Difficulty Accessing Event. I explained that the pictures were not being displayed, although I could get into the event website just fine.

About half an hour ago I received a reply, which, as I know from experience, was copied and pasted from a generic reply form, replaced with relevant information. Charles suggested that the problem was that I was trying to access the event through an email link, or that there was a firewall or antivirus program preventing me from accessing the site. He kindly provided me with my username and password and told me where on the website I could enter this information.

This was quite interesting, since I expressly said in my original email that I had encountered the same problem on multiple occasions from multiple computers, and that I had been able to access my pictures just fine at other times. I wrote back in a not-very-nice tone and explained that I did not need login information; I simply wanted to know why my pictures weren't being displayed. The more I think about the whole thing the more frustrated I get. All the trouble of finding a good photographer and taking photos for an hour after the wedding, and it ends with this! Shoddy website managment and downright extortion!