Fedex Kinko’s (FK or Kinko’s) is a company that is in desperate need of competition. I know there are plenty of one-off mom-and-pop copy shops out there, but I’m unaware of any national competition for FK. If I were aware of a major competitor, I would beat a path to their door. It’s official: Kinko’s sucks.
I have not had many occasions to visit Kinko’s since my undergraduate days, but I have recently found myself in need of a copy/print shop. Kinko’s is the first place to come to mind when I find myself in need. I recall it had a pretty good reputation in my undergrad days and it was open and busy at all hours. There is also a Kinko’s within two miles of my home, so it’s convenient.
Or at least that was my assumption.
Turns out that Kinko’s is incredibly inconvenient. It’s even less convenient than not having a Kinko’s at all.
Let me tell you my story. My semester in grad school started several weeks ago. This is my penultimate semester and I find myself with lots and lots of reading to do. Hundreds of pages a week. The readings aren’t from any particular text. They’re mostly case studies and articles and such, all available for download over the Internet.
I have a printer and could print all these articles myself on a weekly basis, but it is a time-consuming chore and I burn a lot of ink. I figure that it would be faster and more cost effective for me to take the articles to Kinko’s and print them there. I download all the documents I need onto a USB jump drive and head over to Kinko’s. I go there on the assumption that I can just plug my drive into one of the high speed copiers and print out the articles I need at a pretty reasonable rate. I’m thinking that it certainly should be more cost effective than buying bundles of paper and cartons of ink for my printer.
I wander into the Kinko’s expecting to use a self-service option to accomplish my goal. It’s just as well that I expect to do it all my self because none of the staff bother to look up from their various duties when I enter. There certainly are no greetings or can-I-help-you?’s. That would be okay generally, but I can’t seem to find the copier/printer that will allow me to accomplish my task with the tools at hand. Certainly there are plenty of copiers, but none that appear to accept my USB drive.
After two or three minutes of being in obvious need of assistance, I give up and wander over to the counter. My assumptions about printing from my jump drive are, of course, wrong. For one, I cannot plug my jump drive into any of the equipment. This seems counterintuitive to me. Evidently you have to have a printed copy of your material before you can print copies. Who knew?
At this point, I’m a little irked. My original plan has failed, but that’s okay, right? I can just give the staff to print out the material for me. The only problem with this is that it will be $.49 cents a page and I’ll have to give them several hours.
For those of you keeping track, cost-effectiveness and timeliness were two of the reasons I chose Kinko’s in the first place. Several hours and forty-nine cents a page? No, thank you. I’ll pass. There may have been other options that were cheaper, but these were not mentioned to me. Accessing one of their PCs and printing from there occured to me later, but only after I’d purchased printer supplies and done the job myself.
That annoyed me, but it wasn’t enough to keep me from visiting Kinko’s again. Tonight’s little fiasco is the event that will keep me out of Kinko’s for the foreseeable future.
I have need of wallet size photos of myself and a friend for my upcoming trip abroad. I have all the necessary tools to crop and print photos on my own, but I don’t happen to have any photo-quality paper lying around and I suspect my printer is a little low on ink because I had print hundreds of pages of reading material for school.
Not having learned my lesson the first time, I load my photos onto my USB drive and head over the Stinko’s. I know that they have a self-service photo printing station that accepts USB drives. I’ve used one at one of their other locations and I’ve seen the one at the location in question.
Once again, I’m greeted with absolute silence from all Kinko’s customer service representatives when I walk in the door. No problem this time. I know exactly what I need and where to go to get it. The Sony Picture Station is practically staring in my face when I enter and, from the looks of it, it accepts almost every form of portable memory you can buy.
While we’re talking about crappy companies, let’s talk about Sony for a few minutes, shall we? There’s a company that has been almost totally bereft of innovation and regard for its customers for years. Firstly they’ve let companies like Apple and Samsung eat their lunch in the consumer electronics industry. Secondly, they did their level best to destroy their brand by installing malware on the computers of consumers of music from the Sony label. The last incident was enough to cause me to boycott all Sony products. (Twice I’ve purchased Memorex recordable CDs rather than Sony, which was my only other option. Take that, Sony!)
If I weren’t boycotting Sony products already, the Sony Picture Station would’ve been enough to push me over the edge. It has a port for USB drives, but it doesn’t actually accept USB flash drives. Oh sure, you can plug your USB drive into the thing, you just can’t print from it. The touch screen allows you to specify the type of memory you’re using. There is no option for using a USB drive. There’s an option for everything other portable media. Just not for the USB drive.
…
Once again I’m forced to seek out the “customer service” rep. who happens to be surfing the Internet behind the counter. He doesn’t think that USB drives work, at least not if you happen to have any non-image documents on the drive. Now I’m thinking that the Sony Photo Station is a total piece of crap, but it’s too late to drive to Target to use the Kodak photo printer.
Having learned my lesson, I ask about using the PCs to print.
“Well, you can print out on glossy paper.”
“Glossy or photo quality paper?”
“Just glossy.”
Um, no. I need photos. At this point my only option is to drive home, load the photos onto the Secure Digital (SD) card from my camera and drive back to Kinko’s to print the photos.
So I do. It’s really not that far from my house, but it’s a pain in the @$$ anyway.
Back at the Sony Picture Station. It does accept my SD card! Great! We’re almost there. I only need two wallet-size photos. There’s the option for wallet size photo! It’s…grayed out.
Unavailable.
But I can choose to print 5×7 or 4×6 if I so desire.
But I need wallet-sized photos.
But it won’t let me print wallet-size photos.
Why, oh why, dear customer service person does this let me print wallet-sized photos? It is advertised here on the screen. But it will not allow me to print.
“Oh, yeah. That machine isn’t loaded with wallet-size photo paper. You can only print 4×6 or 5×7.”
What? You’ve got to be kidding me. I drive to your store twice and the incredibly inconvenient service that I need is unavailable? Riiiight. Don’t worry, chief. I won’t be darkening the door of your establishment any time soon.
If I can convince others to stop using Kinko’s (or buying Sony products), I’d feel better.
But I know the annual calendars featuring my niece and nephew have to come from somewhere.
