I thought that it might be useful to update this thread with my recent experience of Alain Bourgouin.
I only came across this thread a month after I had consigned a poster to Alain for linen-backing and was starting to feel uneasy at the lack of response I had received from him. Reading through the nightmare-ish tales from his past customers was a kind of "oh,no" moment as I pondered on the best way of dealing with him.
My immediate thought was to ask for the poster to be returned as at that stage no money had changed hands. However, it did appear that this approach had not served other APF members well in the past and that he was likely to dig his heels in and cut off communications entirely. I am not a particularly confrontational person anyway and decided in the end that patience was the best option and that I would just try to jolly him along. Which I did really, albeit through gritted teeth at times.
The hard thing to describe to those who haven't dealt with Alain directly is how adept at being evasive he is - he is brilliant at being vague. On at least two occasions, determined to get some exact information out of him (I still hadn't got from him - after about six weeks or two months - even a provisional estimate of costs or how long it was going to take) I came off the phone still without any clear indication when the work was going to be done.
Finally, he came up with a figure for linen-backing and de-acidification for the poster of £210 which I, with no means of comparison with other UK restorers, thought sounded reasonable. It is a French poster, 120cms by 160cms, which like most older French posters has darkened along all the fold lines but was otherwise in decent condition apart from a bit of fold separation and wear at fold joints. He said "a little bit" of restoration would be required to make good these problems and that his hourly restoration rate was £40 per hour.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, after a further two months or so (about four and a half months altogether) and a few more phone calls, he sent me an invoice (the only time he contacted me directly) including £290 for restoration. This came out of the blue to me and seemed on the high side given that we had agreed it needed minimal restoration. However, there was not a lot that I could do at that juncture other than pay up, which I did.
Overall, I would say that I didn't get put through the wringer as badly as some of the people who posted earlier in this thread but it was still a frustrating experience. The only previous occasion on which I had a poster backed/restored was back in the 1990s when I had just started in the hobby and I picked out Dan Strebin based on an interview he gave in Jon Warren's first poster price guide. Dan was a decent guy to deal with as I recall (is he still active on the scene?) and, put it this way: sending my poster across the Atlantic, Dan backing it, sending the poster to the restoration artist he used, getting it back and returning it to me - all that took less than half the time that Alain needed.
Not sure there is a moral to the story but it sure has put me off getting any more posters linen-backed for the foreseeable future!
