Last Tuesday, I dug out a pair of old, undeveloped black and white films and took them to be developed at the branch of Boots on Portswood high street. The results were rather good, so I dug out another pair of old, undeveloped black and white films last weekend and took them in this morning, only to be told by the assistant that they don’t do black and white unless they’re C41 colour process. Right. Pointed out that I had, in fact, taken two identical films (Kodak TMAX 400) into that very branch some seven days previous, and that they’d been developed without any problems. It took five minutes of me saying “yes, but you developed the same filmstock last week, no these aren’t C41 process, but yes, you processed identical films last week” before the lass went off to make a phonecall to go and check. Lo and behold, they do accept them, but she was “only covering her back”. The customer is presumed wrong until proven otherwise, it would appear.
The irony is that my last experiment in C41 black and white film, some seven years ago, was comprehensively screwed up by (a different branch of) Boots, who processed the damned things as sepiatone without being asked, and managed to accidentally expose part of the film in processing.