Need Advice Fast … Meeting Today

[5hift]

I’m sorry about the long read but I would appreciate any response, as I have no idea of how to handle this.


I found about something that happened involving my sister today and I have a meeting with Future Shop’s manager but before I go in this afternoon I was wondering if anyone had any tips of how I should handle this.



Pretty much the story is that my sister graduated from U of C this winter and my Dad’s present to her was a trip for her to tour Asia, as she has always wanted to. (India, China, Pacific Rim etc). Anyways she brought her Digital Camera with her and took probably over a thousand pictures with it on 2 different memory cards. Last week she took the memory cards to future shop to get the pictures all put onto cds and get developed because she wanted to put together an album of her trip. She came back to pick it up and the girl who was supposed to handle this told her that the memory cards were slightly damaged and she might have lost a picture or two. When my sister looked at them, only 40% of the pictures had been transferred and she was then informed the other 60% had been lost. They tried to blame my sister and say that she didn’t handle the memory cards properly and that they were probably damaged when she went through the scanners at the airport or when she removed the memory cards from the camera for the first time. However we had been viewing the pictures up to the day before she took them to future shop on our TV and computers using those memory cards and there was not a single problem with them. Because my sister was really upset she just quickly paid the bill (yes they still charged her after screwing it up) and she left.

Now I know the memory cards were in working order and that something happened when they were at Future Shop. My sister was ready to just let it go, but I called future shop (northlands) talked to the manager and am going in to talk to him today. I’m not really sure what I’m going to say but I’m pretty pissed right now and plan on making quite the scene in the worst-case scenario. My sister had wanted to go on that trip all throughout high school and she finally did. The amount of money it cost made it kind of a once in a lifetime type of trip as well. The pictures lost were also not just pics of her and her friends. She lost all her pictures of things like the terracotta army, Mao’s tomb, the forbidden city, Tienemen (sp?) Square and that’s in China alone.

Now I know the pictures are probably lost and there’s nothing we can do about that. But shouldn’t Future Shop be held accountable for anything? The only thing the manager offered when I was speaking to him was to refund the 7 dollars they charged my sister and that they would reformat the memory cards so they could be used again (what ever corrupted data is on the cards would be lost for sure though).

What I am wondering is:

1) The data is still on the cards; it’s just corrupted, so is there any way it can be restored by a professional or something (cost is not a factor)?
2) If the data is permanently lost, how far would you or how far should I take it with future shop.

Any ideas of how to handle this would be appreciated, as the main reason I’m pissed is because they damaged the cards and then tried to blame her thinking this is a girl she doesn’t know much about electronics so she will accept it and leave.

[finboy]

my sister had a similar thing happen to one of her memory cards, all the pics were no longer accessable, she asked a couple shops and apperantly it just happens with memory cards sometimes :dunno:

[Weapon_R]

The airport scanners do cause some information losses on films and such. It may have happened with your camera. There really is no way for you to prove that Futureshop did it.

[GTS Jeff]

Future Shop has ZERO obligation to reimburse you for the lost pictures, unless you can concretely prove that their actions caused the mishap. At this point, it's fully their right to tell you to fuck right off. The only reason they're still talking to you is because they're providing customer service. They are bending over backwards to hopefully keep a customer happy so that you'll keep returning to them. This is pretty much all the leverage you have, which isn't much - so don't blow it.

Don't make a scene. That's just stupid. The best thing you can do is be firm, polite, and assertive. Remind them that you are a good customer and that you'd like to continue to be a good customer. Throwing feces like a monkey will just make you look like a monkey.

[AllGoNoShow]

Don't get them to reformat the cards, take your money and leave, then find a few professional data recovery places and see if they have help you out. I know of someone who could possibly help out but it would be pricey (as would anyone) and I would have to talk to him first.

[5hift]

Originally posted by GTS Jeff
Future Shop has ZERO obligation to reimburse you for the lost pictures, unless you can concretely prove that their actions caused the mishap. At this point, it's fully their right to tell you to fuck right off. The only reason they're still talking to you is because they're providing customer service. They are bending over backwards to hopefully keep a customer happy so that you'll keep returning to them. This is pretty much all the leverage you have, which isn't much - so don't blow it.

Don't make a scene. That's just stupid. The best thing you can do is be firm, polite, and assertive. Remind them that you are a good customer and that you'd like to continue to be a good customer. Throwing feces like a monkey will just make you look like a monkey.

Thanks for tips guys,

Im not sure if i explained this properly. So i'll try again: The thing is I know the airport scanners or anything else didnt effect the memory cards because after coming home from the airport and for the week after that, we looked at the pictures all week without any problems or anything along those lines. I am aware memory cards just fuck up for no reason but the reason Im pretty sure Future Shop did something, is from the way the employees acted. First off when she dropped it off and explained what she needed done, the girl in the photo section had no idea what my sister was talking about (she had to check with another guy if they did that). Then when my sister went to pick up the pictures she asked them how they looked. First the girl was like "uh they are great" then as my sister started to look at them she was like "oh you may notice one or two may be missing", then when my sister realized most were missing, the girl just went and got her manager who then came and blamed everything on my sister. Up until the point the memory cards were handed over to future shop they were working fine and the pictures were readily accessible in several different data formats.

And on another note, I'm not like this normally nor do I like to start conflicts for no reason, its just the biggest thing that pissed me off was the way the manager spoke to my sister, im just hoping he tells me to fuck off as well.

[TrevorK]

Try Action Front - they do data recovery. Check out their website www.actionfront.com - they do hard drives and such, might do digital media.

In fact, a quick google comes up with quite a few things to do data recovery like:
http://www.mediarecover.com/


Either way - you most likely won't get much out of your meeting. I could see you convincing them to give you a couple new cards, but that's a long shot.

Remember, they can't admit they did wrong or it possibly opens them to legal action.

[TrevorK]

Note: Action Front is partnered with London Drugs - so London Drugs can send your media to them for free for a free quote.

[tictactoe2004]

well, sorry to hear this, but first off as much as I hate futureshop...


Originally posted by Khali
Im pretty sure Future Shop did something

doest cut it if your trying to blame them for something..

As much as I don't want to put blame on her for this, it was partially her fault. If I had pictures that were that important, the first thing I would do is copy them on to my computer... then if I would make a back up on CD or DVD and take that in to the shop to get printed. There is no need with digital media to give someone the original and not have a back up. If you guys were "viewing the photo's the week prior to that" it would have been easy to copy and paste them on to your PC. I've taken digital photo's to be developed many times and have never once taken my origimal memory card in and handed it over to the staff, every time I have done it I have given them a disc.

Yeah, it sucks... but you cant prove anything and more care should be taken with sentimental items suchs as this.

[rmk]

first things first, if she was viewing them on the computer, why didn't she back them up? (not trying to sound like an ass) but, i think you might be wasting your time with store level management if they only offered your 7 bucks (slap in the face).

i would speak to the manager in person (much harder to blow you off) and mention that this situation is troubling your sister, a valued future shop customer who always spend her money at their store. mention that your family will be in contact with head office, etc... you might get a gift certificate if anything for the trouble.

call head office and speak with everyone there. tell your story to every person who picks up the phone. sometimes head office people are more sympathetic than the hotshot store manager types. mention that the store manager was less than helpful.

good luck,

ryan

[Obscura]

Airport x-rays don't affect memory cards. They only affect film of a certain ISO or above. The more film passes through x-rays, the more it gets damaged. improperly removing a memory card can corrupt the data.

Future shop is in no way resopnsible, unfortunatly. Look at the claim ticket, there is a disclaimer on the back to limit their responsibility.

Sorry to read about your sisters problem.

[5hift]

Well the reason she didnt want to back to pictures up on her computer was because she has a laptop with a small HD and there were literally thousands of pictures. Dont worry about this i've asked her this a hundred times already though.


About future shop giving her a claim ticket waiving any responsibility, that never happened all they took was her name and contact info when she dropped it off.

[GTS Jeff]

So what happened? How did the meeting go?

[sputnik]

Which brand of memory card was affected? Some brands like SanDisk have recovery tools to extract the data that may seem to be inaccessible.

http://www.sandisk.com/retail/rescuepro.asp

Try this first.

[k_dawg]

Originally posted by rmk
first things first, if she was viewing them on the computer, why didn't she back them up? (not trying to sound like an ass) but, i think you might be wasting your time with store level management if they only offered your 7 bucks (slap in the face).

i would speak to the manager in person (much harder to blow you off) and mention that this situation is troubling your sister, a valued future shop customer who always spend her money at their store. mention that your family will be in contact with head office, etc... you might get a gift certificate if anything for the trouble.

call head office and speak with everyone there. tell your story to every person who picks up the phone. sometimes head office people are more sympathetic than the hotshot store manager types. mention that the store manager was less than helpful.

good luck,

ryan

I agree thats probably what I would do in your situation.

[Tyler883]

Next time, view them on your computer, burn a backup onto CD-R, then go get prints made - better yet have the images uploaded over the internet and don't let any old idiot standing at a counter to handle your only copy of pictures.

You are to blame as much as Future Shop, IMO, perhaps more to blame than Future Shop

[Tyler883]

Originally posted by Khali
Well the reason she didnt want to back to pictures up on her computer was because she has a laptop with a small HD and there were literally thousands of pictures. Dont worry about this i've asked her this a hundred times already though.


About future shop giving her a claim ticket waiving any responsibility, that never happened all they took was her name and contact info when she dropped it off.

1000 x 100K pics is only 100Meg, you sister;s hard drive really sucks

[Akagi Redsuns]

Originally posted by Tyler883


1000 x 100K pics is only 100Meg, you sister;s hard drive really sucks

Pics from my wimpy 3.2MP camera is approx 4MB a picture. Use a decent camera with more MP or save them as RAW files and it would be huge.

I would have done incremental downloads from the camera to the computer and burn them to CD or DVD (640MB or 4.7GB at a time). Easy to see in hindsight though.

[Khyron]

At best she had a few gigabyte cards of memory - any harddrive lacking that much free space is useless. The size required is 1-1 mem->hd.

It sucks, but the same thing applies if you'd given them your laptop and they format or destroy the drive - it's on you to back it up before you hand it over.

Khyron

[Tyler883]

The shame about this is a couple of 18 cent CD-Rs could have prevented the loss of these pictures.


Thousands of pictures are worth alot more than a couple of blank CDs. If your sister had stopped and thought about it for a second she wouldn't have been so damn cheap with her blank CDs.

[GTS Jeff]

So what happened?

[Z_Fan]

I want to know what kind of memory card it was too...

So what kind was it!?

Edit: I always take my pictures off my card and onto the computer before I even think about taking them into get prints made. I weed out the crap, retouch stuff as required, then put the images back onto the card for making prints.

The whole point of having the flexibility of the card is to do this kind of stuff. If you just shoot and take it in for prints, you might as well have used film.

:dunno:

However...

I feel sorry for your sister - that's really crappy. I'm going away to Egypt later this year and would be devastated if my pictures get fucked up somehow. So, I have some sympathy for what your sister is going through...

[5hift]

To those that left helpful tips, thanks.

To the people who keep telling me that my sister should have backed up the data to her HD or burned the pictures, how does that help me now? I'll be sure to mention to her what to do in the future. Everything you are telling me I already know, and it really doesnt get me anywhere. It might not have been a case where she had a "shitty" HD or "was too cheap to buy cds". The whole reason this problem happened was because she kept on bugging me since she got back to copy the pictures to cd as her laptop is old and doesnt have a CD-RW drive. I took too long because I was busy with my own stuff so she got tired of waiting and brought it to Future Shop to get them to do it without telling me.


Anyways for those that care, I went down and talked to the manager. Before he was blaming my sister and now he just kept saying he was sorry. It was really hard to find anything out from him as any question i gave was responded with a "i dont know" and an apology. The conversation ended with him saying he would take the memory card back and do some restoration work on it and would give me a call in a few days. I am yet to hear from him.

[5hift]

I beleive they were both SanDisk. I would understand if this happened to just one card. But both cards were working fine when dropped off and both suddenly had problems and lost data. Seems kinda shady to me.

[Z_Fan]

^ I agree that it is a little strange BOTH cards would work and then suddenly not.

Much more likely for one to fail ... or at least you'd think only one might fail under 'normal' circumstances. Since both went at once, you'd have to figure both were exposed to identical circumstances that made them fail. Not likely they both failed at the exact time in the exact way just by co-incidence.

I have been using SanDisk cards and they've never given me a problem to date.

I have heard of people having issues with them though. (Corruption) - Back when CostCo was selling them I had a buddy who bought one from there and it didn't work - EVER. It corrupted every picture it ever shot before it got returned... LOL.

[5hift]

Originally posted by Z_Fan
^ I
Much more likely for one to fail ... or at least you'd think only one might fail under 'normal' circumstances. Since both went at once, you'd have to figure both were exposed to identical circumstances that made them fail. Not likely they both failed at the exact time in the exact way just by co-incidence.


Thats what I was trying to explain to the Future Shop manager, on how remote the possibility was that both cards just happened to get corrupted at the exact same time when they were both working fine before. I dont know , its easier for him to blame bad luck than accept that maybe someone in his photo lab did something wrong.

[Tyler883]

[i]

I feel sorry for your sister - that's really crappy. ........ So, I have some sympathy for what your sister is going through... [/B]

I agree. I'm sorry for being harsh with my last couple posts, but it really is a simple thing to gaurd against, yet so many of us don't.

Sometimes a few harsh words can make some of us so opinionated on this matter that we will never forget to backup our images again. Sometimes a few harsh words are also embarassing or rude, I apoligize for that.