The word “professional” could be synonymous with a quality product, intended to be used by “professionals or people who knows…”

I have always been pleased with customer service received by Hahnemühle, specially by Spanish representative HelloArt.

But this time, Hahnemühle-Dassel has let me down by an incomprehensive approach.

I am a regular, medium volume user of papers of this brand for my personal work as well as owner-printer of my small workshop GraficArtPrints.

The fact is that after acquiring my first roll of Harman by Hahnemühle Gloss Baryta, the paper received was very different from the Sample Packs provided by Hahnemühle themselves. Not only the gloss was much higher, recalling an RC paper, but what was behind the gloss (the baryta or paper substrate), gave a completely different look at the paper.

I assumed Harman or Hahnemühle had change the formula to make that paper and that the paper would look that way from now on.

I was not allowed to return the paper. Instead I was asked to send to Germany a sample of my paper batch and a sample of my sample pack to compare. At first,  It seemed pretty surreal that Hahnemühle asked me to send them samples of two papers supposedly manufactured by themselves, but I did.

Their reply was disappointing. An Export Area Sales Manager  with one or several degrees in business (but with no idea what a *baryta glossy darkroom paper looks like) puting on paper what someone else had instructed to write.

What the Hahnemühle technicians did, was mesure specular gloss of both samples. The readings of both samples were very similar and in their own words, “both samples correspond the setpoint of 50 +/- 5  tolerance and comply our product specification”.

“What makes one paper different from another, is not just how glossy it is”

Of course I think the subject is not about to know the specular gloss of both samples, but that both samples look very different from one to another. What makes one paper different from another, is not just how glossy it is. In other words, we could get a similar specular gloss readings of two completely different subjetcs, let’s say an RC gloss paper vs. some kind of plexiglass, and we would be talking of two incomparable substrates.

“Lack of responsability by Hahnemühle”

I understand everybody can mistake, paper batches can differ slitghtly or paper manufacturers can change their production without notice. But I think that selling something that is not the same as a Sample Pack and rejecting to accept a return, clearly shows a lack of responsibility by the Hahnemühle distributor of such paper.

“A bad deal”

Generaly speaking, having a client dissatisfied is bad deal, so I do not understand why Hahnemühle wants me to keep that paper. A paper that I will watch daily in my workshop, recalling the mistreatment recived.