Target Online Photo Center

What can I say? I'm extremely disappointed in the Target Online Photo Center. There I've said it, now let me tell you why.

The story is quite simple really. Once again one of my kids needs a few pictures printed out from my digital camera for a school project due the following day. Being in the Wausau area we have several choices available to us to upload our digital photos for one hour prints, Wal-Mart located in Rib Mountain and quite a distance away, not to mention always extremely busy. Walgreens, which is my preferred choice, but for some unknown reason was requiring 4 hours to develop my prints or Target, which I had never used before, but were only 1 cent more and showing 1 hour for developing.

Being it was 4:30 on Sunday I opted for the Target Online Photo Center option. I set up a new account, upload my photos. I then began the process of selecting my prints, and ordering the quantities required for my son. Order completed, e-mail confirmation received, approximate time until prints are done, one hour. As a courtesy an additional e-mail will be sent when the prints are finished. Great, time to watch a little more NFL football.

65 minutes later, no e-mail. Alright being its Sunday evening I'll give it a little longer.

90 Minutes passed and nothing from Target. So being I needed lunch box food along with the pictures, I printed out my e-mailed acknowledgement and headed the seven miles into town.

First stop Target. After standing in a short line for 5 minutes I was able to request my photos. Several minutes of searching in the drawers under my last name failed to find my envelope with prints. Another several minutes searching for my first name also failed to find any prints. So the standard questions: "How long ago did you upload them? Almost two hours, we would have received them right away. Are you sure you did it right?" The last question really got my blood pressure up. I've been working with the internet since there were 14.4 modems and some 17 year old, pimple faced kid asks me in a condescending way if I did it right?

I have the order acknowledgement number on the e-mail received from the Target Online Photo Center, but it's in the van. I'll be right back in. So after proceeding to walk to the van, retrieve the Target Online Photo Center acknowledgement I returned to the photo counter. More puzzled looks and total confusion. Yes I indeed must have correctly uploaded my pictures and ordered them correctly. Says so right there on that paper.

Sorry sir, they're still not showing in the system and we can't retrieve them manually if they don't exist on our site.

So now what, I know, I'll just run back home the seven miles and resend them, this time to Walgreens. 15 minutes later I called and the photo tech said they were processing and should be out in about 5 minutes. Great, I headed back to town and got my prints from Walgreens.

So what ever happened to my "Phantom Order" placed with the Target Online Photo Center? Well, one hour turned in to 20 hours and my duplicate prints were completed the next day. To bad I've been out of town and unable to pick up my order. I'm pretty sure I'll have some choice words for their Photo Manager.