Casserole dishes, candles and camera film processing
What do the three items all have in common?
The answer is that they have all recently dropped out of the government’s basket of goods used to calculate the UK's rate of inflation. Goods and services from 700 items are annually compared by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) are compared to obtain the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) and the Retail Prices Index (RPI).
We think this is really bad news as although it may be unimportant to the government, film processing is still very important to Firstcall and we intend to continue measuring this service for our customers (even though we do not offer this service ourselves).
Below, you’ll find our in-house survey as to the cost of processing a 35mm film and printing it onto 6 x 4 inch paper. We intend to repeat the exercise next year and we’ll give you the inflation ratio FPI (Firstcall Price Index).
Company
Price
Time for processing
Lab
Paper Choice
Boots
£5.99
24 hours
In store
Glossy
DS colour, Manchester
£6.49 inc CD
Two days
In store
Glossy or Matt
Jessops
£6.50
24 hours
In store
Glossy or Matt
Boots
£6.99
One Hour
In store
Glossy
London Camera Exchange
£6.99
One Week
Wembley
Glossy or Matt
Clifton Camaras
£6.99
One week
Photoview
Glossy
Photo Express, Hull
£6.99
Same Day
in store
Glossy or Matt
Jessops
£8.00
One Hour
In store
Glossy or Matt
Jacobs
£8.99 inc CD
One Week
CeWe
Glossy or Matt
Snappy Snaps
£9.35
24 Hours
In store
Glossy or Matt
Snappy Snaps
£10.35
One Hour
In store
Glossy or Matt
Spectrum, Plymouth
£12.35 inc CD
Three days
In store
Glosssy or Lustre
Peak Imaging, Sheffield
£13.14
Two days
In store
Glossy
Given the service perhaps the government should also put an index on time because in the world of film processing – time is definitely money but the winner for overall service (in our view) is still Boots. For the full story, please go to https://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/mar/13/teenage-fiction-ipads-inflation-basket
- 22nd March 2012
