I know what I say isn't anything new, Kinko's blows. $6.95 to start scanning color large format drawings, and $1.99 thereafter. I'm a broke student. I have 50+ drawings to scan.. any ideas? I need it cheap and fast.
there was a copy place at my college that had a great photo inside their front door you would see when you were leaving. it was of their storefront in the stripmall... with a kinkos van parked out front to get copies made.
I once brought a portfolio to kinko's for spiral binding. I had printed it myself, it had taken forever, being meticulously printed on satin heavyweight paper and vellum overlays, I now only had two hours to get it bound and make the half hour drive to deliver it at school.
Kinkos ripped the left 3/8" of my pages. ALL of them. The clerk tried to just give them back to me with a "Sorry, we couldn't do it." He tried to move on to the next customer. I turned up my voice, asked him what I would be compensated for the ruining of the portfolio, which would cost me my passing grade in a 6-credit, $1000/credit class. The manager happened to notice this, asked what was wrong. I told him, "Your idiot employee not only destroyed three months of work, but he attempted to return the ruined work to me with absolutely no compensation." Fortunately, I had some more vellum in my bag, and the manager immediately gave me a free copy key to copy every page over again, and bound them himself directly over the places where the holes photocopied. Now, if he could be so helpful to me so quickly, why on earth couldn't someone have bound it properly the first time, even if it took twice as long?
My gf is an ex-Kinko's employee/cultist, as are some of our friends (they're everywhere!) Want to hear some good kinko's stories, drop an "order back" at a party sometime.
cryzko, a local fax is ok, but don't try to $end one long distan$e. i made that mi$take when out of town, needed to fax a contract back to my realtor. yow$a.
If you are in college they should have large format scanning and plotters available for minimal fee. They did when I was there in the late 90's. They also had a copy center that did binding, faxes, etc. Just a cheap student run Kinko's. Still thinks a glossy 24"x36" plot should only cost $10. Almost worth taking one class and paying student fees per semester for that.
One semester I had to get the same work done at a Kinko's, on three seperate occasions. It costs me three wildly varying amounts. I swear they just make up prices on the spot and charge you. Also, they never calibrate their color printers, I swear. I got wildly different color each time, to match my prices...
My advice is that if you need to do small personal runs and work, find an alphagraphics near you, if there is one--they are AWESOME!!!!! Also reasonably priced.
scan all of them and when they ask how many and how big tell them you scanned 5 drawings that were 18x24. also do it a 3am - that usually worked for me.
I just got bent over at my local FedEx Kinko's, which used to be able to do the nice kind of spiral binding (I think that's what it was called) but now only does the sh*tty coil binding. Crunched for time and in a metered parking spot, I gave in. Not only is it ugly, but it cost $5.50 a pop too....
But what really set me off was trying to get back to my office, which, though only a mile away, took about 30 minutes because I was driving behind some jackhole who decided to sit through 3 red lights while trying to turn left. On the third light I was so infuriated I squealed my tires and went around him. Whilst giving him the look, of course.
I think you're better off just saying to the kinko's person "I need you to go ahead and fuck this up for me"...
They've fucked up EVERY portfolio job I've ever taken to them in some way. The worst was I took my portfolio to get into grad school to be bound (on the last day it was due) and they ended up lopping off the top inch including a third of all the project titles.
Not sure what the kinko nut job had been doing, but for some reason his hands were wet, thus leaving water drops and smears all over my portfolio that was due for fourth year.
No apology, no explanantion, no amedns. It was 2am, final 18 hrs of work straight, too tired to cry.
The kinkos here charges like 50 cents a minute for computer time. I had to open up one photoshop file and send it to the printer. The computer was so damn slow it took over 20 minutes to open the file. For them, it makes the most sense to have the slowest machine possible I guess. The lesson is, unless the job is incredibly straightforward (which architecture jobs rarely are) prepare to be frustrated.
I am just kidding about kinko's, but for you cincinnati people, a friend and I went to the short vine kinko's, my friend was printing some stuff and I was getting a project bound, we were in there for like an hour and a half putting our books together and getting everything ready to be bound and sent out for a competition. We go to pay and this biatch says "finally, its about time you guys get out of here." I hadn't paid for my stuff yet and I asked if they sold letter envelopes and she said how many do you need, I said 10, I tried to pay for them and she refused and kept saying she just wanted us out of here. HAG! It was the most bizarre customer service experience I ever had. I guess we were monopolizing the paper cutter, i dunno.
I had to copy a drawing set of about 25 24x36 sheets. This was my 2nd year of school and I was flat broke, also, my first time in a Kinkos. I walked in, started working, and realized I was supposed to enter my credit card before working. Turns out, the person who used the machine before me never signed off, so my entire job was charged to their card! Ha, I'm an ass.
oh man I've had that same shitty slow computer crap pulled on me!!! You end up paying like $20 simply to OPEN a file and hit PRINT. no joke. I learned to burn to cd and let the kinko's fucks deal with it. they're already going to screw up the print anyway, why not let them fuck with the computer, too.
Not always. A local printer SERIOUSLY ripped me off the time-before-last that I had to print my portfolio. Like to the tune of hundreds. It was such an obvious ripoff that I even had written proof, but as I was boarding a plane the next day and they knew it, there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
I've had my best luck with professional printers who are kind and personable enough to do small stuff for me on the side. AlphaGraphics is the perfect example of that. Your local mom-and-pop print shop probably doesn't calibrate their color every week, and a professional place will.
I had a fucking amazing experience there this past month. Like incredible. Like they came in on the weekends over a HOLIDAY just for me, spent 3 hours doing test printing with me while we adjusted for every kind of variable and they let my work monopolize all their time, they finally ran a whole portfolio set for me and then we saw the color was slightly off on half the pages so they ran the whole thing again... did an extremely precise trimming and binding job, did an amazing printing job.... and then *they* still weren't satisfied for some reason (although I kept saying over and over that I was) and they took 1/2 off the price! Plus they didn't charge me for any of the TONS of test prints we did. I ended up paying $100 when I should have paid about $375, I tallied it up.
And they did all this in total crunch mode and managed to keep me calm. So yeah, I'm pretty happy with them. In fact it's so far the best printing experience I've had, and I've done a lot of printing. A++ will use again!
In fact I'm thinking of taking them a bottle of champagne this weeks as a thanks.
Actually I meant to give them a little thread to themselves just in case anyone in the LA area needed printing help. Honestly anything I could do to pay these people back, I would. And no, I don't own stock!
haha YES a i hate kinkos thread !
just this week i had to make some faxes, five sheets to one number and it cost me $10. It wouldn't cost that much to make a long distance phone call for half a minute why in the world does it cost that much to make a long distance fax? Is this standard?
the people.... the... p e o p l e that work there....
4 out of the 10 grad school portfolios I had bound at kinkos were effed up.
either they bound it on the wrong side (no matter how explicit I was and how obviously the formatting was) OR they bound the first half right and then flipped the second half and bound it on the wrong side.
I was always in a rush (my fault) and ended up spending all night re-printing 3 times. When i made them reprint it, it looked like crap on their color laser printers.
here in nyc i have waited in line for about 15 minutes to pay...
TO PAY...and we're not talking a long line..we're talking about
2 people in line..and no one waiting on them at the cash
registers. people just standing at the front counter waiting for
someone to walk up and finally take their money. i wonder how
many have walked out without paying without guilt knowing
that they tried...i mean i/we should be able to charge them with
the time we spent just waiting.
it's obviously all about the people you have to deal with..any
place is as good as the people behind the machines...if they
care they'll do a good job..and there are just some rare employees
that really, really care...unfortuneately there may be ten of those
people working at all of the kinko's on the planet combined.
In school, we (the design students) actually ran a kinkos out of business. Maybe we shouldn't have, but we would walk in with our tubes full of sheets to scan and copy, then walk out with the tube stuffed with the originals and our copies. We never paid. We didn't feel guilty then because they did make you wait to pay them, and then they charged an amazingly high price. So sorry to all you folks who have to go to Downtown Philly for copies because the Cityline Kinkos has been replaced by a Subway.
i cannot begin to count the number of times i've just walked out of kinkos - ostensibly stealing their merchandise
they're all too lazy to notice anyway.
it's really easy. all you do is have them make the copies in the back for you. after they finish, they usually hand you the finished product in a box and expect you to stand in line to pay for it. all you have to do is say "thank you," turn around and walk out the door. it works every time.
Jun 6, 07 4:43 pm ·
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!@#$% Kinko's
I know what I say isn't anything new, Kinko's blows. $6.95 to start scanning color large format drawings, and $1.99 thereafter. I'm a broke student. I have 50+ drawings to scan.. any ideas? I need it cheap and fast.
Oh yeah.. feel free to share any Kinko's discrepancy stories with me.
kinkos charged me $8.45 to make 4 cuts.
tell me.
they only offer one type of service for fed ex now to the states.
letter = $70
fucking fedEXkinkos
there was a copy place at my college that had a great photo inside their front door you would see when you were leaving. it was of their storefront in the stripmall... with a kinkos van parked out front to get copies made.
kinkos is only good for faxes.....
they have a charge if you dont have your files in pdf, they charge 2.50 per file to make it pdf.....
luckily i found a good printer in detroit that does great work....
heck, you should see what it costs over here...
try the school library, they usually have scanners and such.
well at least mine had a large format scanner
I once brought a portfolio to kinko's for spiral binding. I had printed it myself, it had taken forever, being meticulously printed on satin heavyweight paper and vellum overlays, I now only had two hours to get it bound and make the half hour drive to deliver it at school.
Kinkos ripped the left 3/8" of my pages. ALL of them. The clerk tried to just give them back to me with a "Sorry, we couldn't do it." He tried to move on to the next customer. I turned up my voice, asked him what I would be compensated for the ruining of the portfolio, which would cost me my passing grade in a 6-credit, $1000/credit class. The manager happened to notice this, asked what was wrong. I told him, "Your idiot employee not only destroyed three months of work, but he attempted to return the ruined work to me with absolutely no compensation." Fortunately, I had some more vellum in my bag, and the manager immediately gave me a free copy key to copy every page over again, and bound them himself directly over the places where the holes photocopied. Now, if he could be so helpful to me so quickly, why on earth couldn't someone have bound it properly the first time, even if it took twice as long?
My gf is an ex-Kinko's employee/cultist, as are some of our friends (they're everywhere!) Want to hear some good kinko's stories, drop an "order back" at a party sometime.
Its a cult!
cryzko, a local fax is ok, but don't try to $end one long distan$e. i made that mi$take when out of town, needed to fax a contract back to my realtor. yow$a.
If you are in college they should have large format scanning and plotters available for minimal fee. They did when I was there in the late 90's. They also had a copy center that did binding, faxes, etc. Just a cheap student run Kinko's. Still thinks a glossy 24"x36" plot should only cost $10. Almost worth taking one class and paying student fees per semester for that.
One semester I had to get the same work done at a Kinko's, on three seperate occasions. It costs me three wildly varying amounts. I swear they just make up prices on the spot and charge you. Also, they never calibrate their color printers, I swear. I got wildly different color each time, to match my prices...
My advice is that if you need to do small personal runs and work, find an alphagraphics near you, if there is one--they are AWESOME!!!!! Also reasonably priced.
scan all of them and when they ask how many and how big tell them you scanned 5 drawings that were 18x24. also do it a 3am - that usually worked for me.
i'm thinking about just taping them all into one long drawing and saying it was a 24x36.. you think they check that?
I just got bent over at my local FedEx Kinko's, which used to be able to do the nice kind of spiral binding (I think that's what it was called) but now only does the sh*tty coil binding. Crunched for time and in a metered parking spot, I gave in. Not only is it ugly, but it cost $5.50 a pop too....
But what really set me off was trying to get back to my office, which, though only a mile away, took about 30 minutes because I was driving behind some jackhole who decided to sit through 3 red lights while trying to turn left. On the third light I was so infuriated I squealed my tires and went around him. Whilst giving him the look, of course.
Seriously, who does that? F*ckwads, that's who.
WonderK, if there's an AlphaGraphics near you, they do the nicer spiral binding. They even do the *really* nice wire-o metal binding.
20 x 20 color plot on standard bond = $38 @ Detroit Kinko's (RenCen)
I think you're better off just saying to the kinko's person "I need you to go ahead and fuck this up for me"...
They've fucked up EVERY portfolio job I've ever taken to them in some way. The worst was I took my portfolio to get into grad school to be bound (on the last day it was due) and they ended up lopping off the top inch including a third of all the project titles.
Not sure what the kinko nut job had been doing, but for some reason his hands were wet, thus leaving water drops and smears all over my portfolio that was due for fourth year.
No apology, no explanantion, no amedns. It was 2am, final 18 hrs of work straight, too tired to cry.
So I asked the Kinko's guy if $6.95 means any size scan.
"Yes, any size."
"ANY size?"
"Yes..."
So I'm going in tomorrow with a 36" by 10' drawing.
The kinkos here charges like 50 cents a minute for computer time. I had to open up one photoshop file and send it to the printer. The computer was so damn slow it took over 20 minutes to open the file. For them, it makes the most sense to have the slowest machine possible I guess. The lesson is, unless the job is incredibly straightforward (which architecture jobs rarely are) prepare to be frustrated.
Danny, why stop at 10'?
Hey, I work at kinko's!
run while you still have a chance, jamez.. run.
I am just kidding about kinko's, but for you cincinnati people, a friend and I went to the short vine kinko's, my friend was printing some stuff and I was getting a project bound, we were in there for like an hour and a half putting our books together and getting everything ready to be bound and sent out for a competition. We go to pay and this biatch says "finally, its about time you guys get out of here." I hadn't paid for my stuff yet and I asked if they sold letter envelopes and she said how many do you need, I said 10, I tried to pay for them and she refused and kept saying she just wanted us out of here. HAG! It was the most bizarre customer service experience I ever had. I guess we were monopolizing the paper cutter, i dunno.
My best Kinko's experience...
I had to copy a drawing set of about 25 24x36 sheets. This was my 2nd year of school and I was flat broke, also, my first time in a Kinkos. I walked in, started working, and realized I was supposed to enter my credit card before working. Turns out, the person who used the machine before me never signed off, so my entire job was charged to their card! Ha, I'm an ass.
now that's perfect, chili..
oh man I've had that same shitty slow computer crap pulled on me!!! You end up paying like $20 simply to OPEN a file and hit PRINT. no joke. I learned to burn to cd and let the kinko's fucks deal with it. they're already going to screw up the print anyway, why not let them fuck with the computer, too.
Unless you live in the mountains, go to our local printer.
Your, not our.
Not always. A local printer SERIOUSLY ripped me off the time-before-last that I had to print my portfolio. Like to the tune of hundreds. It was such an obvious ripoff that I even had written proof, but as I was boarding a plane the next day and they knew it, there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
I've had my best luck with professional printers who are kind and personable enough to do small stuff for me on the side. AlphaGraphics is the perfect example of that. Your local mom-and-pop print shop probably doesn't calibrate their color every week, and a professional place will.
myriam... by chance do you own stock in alphagraphics? you seem to be a rather large advocate of them..
I had a fucking amazing experience there this past month. Like incredible. Like they came in on the weekends over a HOLIDAY just for me, spent 3 hours doing test printing with me while we adjusted for every kind of variable and they let my work monopolize all their time, they finally ran a whole portfolio set for me and then we saw the color was slightly off on half the pages so they ran the whole thing again... did an extremely precise trimming and binding job, did an amazing printing job.... and then *they* still weren't satisfied for some reason (although I kept saying over and over that I was) and they took 1/2 off the price! Plus they didn't charge me for any of the TONS of test prints we did. I ended up paying $100 when I should have paid about $375, I tallied it up.
And they did all this in total crunch mode and managed to keep me calm. So yeah, I'm pretty happy with them. In fact it's so far the best printing experience I've had, and I've done a lot of printing. A++ will use again!
In fact I'm thinking of taking them a bottle of champagne this weeks as a thanks.
Actually I meant to give them a little thread to themselves just in case anyone in the LA area needed printing help. Honestly anything I could do to pay these people back, I would. And no, I don't own stock!
Maybe you should buy some.
Hmm, now there's a thought. Too bad printing my portfolio has left me broke.
haha YES a i hate kinkos thread !
just this week i had to make some faxes, five sheets to one number and it cost me $10. It wouldn't cost that much to make a long distance phone call for half a minute why in the world does it cost that much to make a long distance fax? Is this standard?
the people.... the... p e o p l e that work there....
4 out of the 10 grad school portfolios I had bound at kinkos were effed up.
either they bound it on the wrong side (no matter how explicit I was and how obviously the formatting was) OR they bound the first half right and then flipped the second half and bound it on the wrong side.
I was always in a rush (my fault) and ended up spending all night re-printing 3 times. When i made them reprint it, it looked like crap on their color laser printers.
eff kinkos!
here in nyc i have waited in line for about 15 minutes to pay...
TO PAY...and we're not talking a long line..we're talking about
2 people in line..and no one waiting on them at the cash
registers. people just standing at the front counter waiting for
someone to walk up and finally take their money. i wonder how
many have walked out without paying without guilt knowing
that they tried...i mean i/we should be able to charge them with
the time we spent just waiting.
it's obviously all about the people you have to deal with..any
place is as good as the people behind the machines...if they
care they'll do a good job..and there are just some rare employees
that really, really care...unfortuneately there may be ten of those
people working at all of the kinko's on the planet combined.
when i was in the states, i only go to kinko at midnite when i absolutely 100% ran out of options.
i remember there's always a chinese printing place in town where u get things done nice and cheap?
in hongkong there is one kinko and so far i've never seen any customers there since it opened like 10 years ago.
In school, we (the design students) actually ran a kinkos out of business. Maybe we shouldn't have, but we would walk in with our tubes full of sheets to scan and copy, then walk out with the tube stuffed with the originals and our copies. We never paid. We didn't feel guilty then because they did make you wait to pay them, and then they charged an amazingly high price. So sorry to all you folks who have to go to Downtown Philly for copies because the Cityline Kinkos has been replaced by a Subway.
i cannot begin to count the number of times i've just walked out of kinkos - ostensibly stealing their merchandise
they're all too lazy to notice anyway.
it's really easy. all you do is have them make the copies in the back for you. after they finish, they usually hand you the finished product in a box and expect you to stand in line to pay for it. all you have to do is say "thank you," turn around and walk out the door. it works every time.
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