P3D A&I Processing

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   I have used A&I on 3 occaisions for Kodachrome. Out of 3 rolls, they
claimed the post office never delivered 1. I finally got it after
waiting a month. I figured it was a fluke of the postal system. After
reading the posting on here, now I am not so sure.
   I would like to address the quality of Qualex NJ vs A&I. Qualex uses
my local drugstore for collection and drop-off. First my local drug
store gave me a hard time about asking for "no Cut, no Mount" instructions.
   I called Kodak/Qualex and they had no problem with my request for no-cut
no-mount, but who ever the firm was handling pick-up here in Ohio were
being real jerks about it. The other problem with Kodak was the lousy
quality of processing. I got back film with fingerprints and a lot of
scratches. And I do mean a lot of scratches that were so annoying they
show up in the viewer.
   So I tried A&I on reccommendation of the rec.photo.newsgroup. A&I
generally does a better job of processing Kodachrome, but there are
still scratches that should not be there. And there was the incident
of "lost" film. I have 2 mailers left for A&I. At the moment, I don't
know of any other Kodachrome processing lab. There used to be one
in Dallas. Dunno if they are still there.
   By the way, the switch to E6 film hasn't corrected all problems. Now
I can get the film processed locally, but they manage to leave brown
spots all over that show up as big brown spots in the viewer. So I have
lost the longevity advantage of Kodachrome and gained a finer grain
film in Fuji Provia 100F. But to tell the truth I wish Kodak in Findlay
Ohio was still running. I never had the slightest problem with them and
the quality was always first-rate.
   Time and technology march on.

-Fred