User Comments

1. 

   2/23/09

   Stillthinking

   I worked for Ritz camera in college and am not surprised by this. The switch to digital has put the squeeze on many photo developing companies. Also, Ritz was a privately held company. Mr. Ritz and Mr. Wolf were brothers in competition with one another until they decided to merge against the bigger threat of Wal-mart selling cameras and 1 hour developing. This is less a sign of the times as much as it is a sign of the power of Walmart and changing technology to force out companies with antiquated business models.

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2. 

   2/23/09

   busylizzy

   Bankruptcy just means they don't have to pay their outstanding debts and can start anew. Good luck trying to get people to loan them money, though!
   
   I never liked Ritz. I used to always demand my film be sent out to Kodak. One day they said Kodak stopped developing pix so I used their inhouse service. There would be wiggly lines from lint and little white dots in my pix. They always blamed me or my camera. When my daughter was born I asked them to print out 100 copies of the pic I took of her at 1 day old to be in the announcements. The reprints had a huge blackish brown dot right between the eyes - looked like a hairy mole! They blamed me until I showed them the negative (no dot on it). When discs became available I'd ask for my prints plus a disc and then I was finding inconsistencies on the photos, discs and negatives. Nothing was the same. Dirty lab conditiions! Then I found two other stores that were still sending out to Kodak so I dropped Ritz like a hot potato for their lies and dirty lab. And now, years later, it's digital and I am totally independant. Sorry Ritz!!!!! You should have diversified!!!!

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   1. 

      2/23/09

      Stillthinking

      That is the case with most one hour photo places: quality varied from lab to lab. The one I worked at was immaculate and we turned out great quality photos. But that was not the case everywhere. I will say that Ritz was very competitive in their prices with most other specialty chains, but it's not enough to be competitive. The buying power of Amazon and Walmart is hard to compete with.