Good news and bad news.
Good news is that Kodak has an online tracking service for those mailers that
take your Kodachrome/E6 film to Fairlawn, NJ:
http://www.kodak.com/global/en/service/supportServices/qualex/index.shtml
(Apologies if John L. or others have posted about this service previously.)
Bad news is that it appears to provide info on the status mainly of Qualex
in-store processing orders. There is a link to click if you are checking the
status of mailers, but if it finds your mailer number it appears to
interpolate it among Qualex store orders if the mailer number matches a store
envelope number. When I checked my number, three different items (!) came up.
Worse, the web program simply uses language designed around orders being
returned to the store: my mailer was scheduled to be returned "to the store"
on 2/28!
Also bad is that despite my order being scheduled to be returned to me on
2/28, the item was not actually mailed until 3/5. This item was mailed to
Kodak on 2/17, so turnaround will ultimately have taken about 3 weeks if I get
my slides back today or tomorrow. Geesh.
Sort of good is that there is an email address to use if there are questions
about the mailer/order. I got an auto-response to verify receipt of the email
and then a personal response the next morning (an apology for the discrepancy
between the target return date and the actual return date).
With a little interpretative good sense, one can use this site for a lot more
peace of mind about mailer orders, which are roughly half the cost of Qualex
processing when purchased from B&H, and it appears that a target date for
completion of the order can allow you to send an email inquiry if the order is
not showing timely completion.
Finally, I checked the number from my last mailer order, which I received back
from Fairlawn about 2/20. It had already been dropped from the database. I'm
not sure how much of a window there is, but it appears that current data on
orders may not be available for more than a couple of weeks at the most after
completion of processing.
Joel W.
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