r00ster.com

Webshots is an online photo-sharing community that wishes it could be as cool as flickr some day. I joined it back in 2005 for reasons that I no longer remember but never uploaded a single photo. Over the years they would sometimes send me news and updates and basically spew random bullshit about their site that served no real purpose other than try and fill up my mailbox (thankfully Gmail offers over 7GB of storage). Anyways, on September 15th I recieved yet another email from them but this one caught my attention. Webshots had just opened an online print store recently and to mark this special occasion they were offering 50 free prints to every member. Sweet deal! Ok, the photos are only 4x6 but still - they are free. I had a lot of pictures that I was thinking of getting printed anyways so the timing was pretty good. I went to webshots.com, requested my username and password (I'm pretty sure that it is not humanly possible to remember a password that you created three years ago and haven't used since), and started uploading pictures. Now, at this point I would like to point out that the banner at the top of the page said "All discounts will be applied at checkout" so I didn't think much of the $11.45 that it said I was getting charged as I was going through the ordering process. And then I got the confirmation page. Which said that I owed the sneaky bastards eleven dollars and forty five cents. I wasn't really surprised by this, seeing as this wasn't the first time that a website screwed up my order (afterall, I did just buy all my textbooks online). I looked for their phone number for a good 20 minutes (I don't think they like getting phone calls) and dialed the number only to hear some bitch tell me that they are closed for the day. I went through all the emails I had from Webshots and through all the user menus on their site to try and cancel the order. You would think that I wouldn't have any problems with this, especially since its only been half an hour or so since I placed my order and they were closed anyways so its not like they could process it, but oh no - apparently my pictures went to print the second I clicked the submit button. Great. Just fucking great. I called them again first thing in the morning and after a while got them to admit that they should not have charged me. The guy on the other end promised me that this problem would be resolved and the money I payed would be credited to my Webshots account and used when I ordered prints from them next time. Oh no you don't. I politely explained to the nice man that I wasn't planning on dealing with Webshots again any time soon and I wanted my eleven dollars and forty five cents back. He told me that they are unable to return my money back to my credit card but after a short argument which consisted of me explaining to him that they had better be able to do just that, he told me that he would go and check with his manager. He returned soon (thank God, because I wasn't in the mood for elevator music) and told me that I was going to get all my money back (although I still had to pay for shipping but whatever). Today, September 18th, I recieved an email informing me that there was a package for me at the cluster office. I went across the street to get it hoping that it was my Statistics textbook. Nope, it was the pictures. Whatever, still a good package, I suppose. I hurried back up to my room and opened the big envelope. The quality is pretty good, the colors are bright, everything is fine. Except they decided to crop every single picture. So now my name is "ev Benkin" and my website ends in ".or". Now, I can hear you saying "but Lev, maybe the pictures were just a different size and they had to be cropped in order to fit?" To you I say: shut the hell up - the pictures were specifically sized to fit on a 4x6 card. Its a good thing that these fuckballs are in Seattle because the temptation is strong to rip their nuts off. I did not pay $3.95 for some dimwit to crop my pictures at their own free will. The moral of the story is: go to CVS. Or Sam's club. Or Wal-Mart. Or buy a photo printer. Whatever you do, stay away from Webshots.