In response to Governor Walz’s announcement on Thursday April 30th. Two Squares is very happy to be able to resume services. We will be opening our stores and taking calls as of May 4th to allow for training of our staff. We will then be offering curb-side services starting Tuesday May 5th. Of course, we will be following new operational guidelines to comply with the new safety standards. Please read the details below to better understand how we would like to keep our interactions as safe as possible.
Our facility:
We are a small shop with just a handful of employees. Social distancing is easy for us as each employee works at a station that is more than 6 feet from any other employee. If a customer needs to come into the store directly for questions, one of our technicians will meet you at the front counter with a mask and handle your media wearing gloves. Our front counter has a plexiglass barrier installed to minimize risk. Of course, we will be doing regular surface cleanings.
Face Mask Requirement:
In response to Governor Walz’s executive order starting July 25, 2020, we are asking all customers who enter our facility to wear face coverings.
Handling of Your Media:
For over 10 years, Two Squares has used a process of “tape rejuvenation” which involves a dehydration process to ensure the safety and best possible quality of your tapes and minimize potential damage that old tapes can instill onto our equipment. You can learn more about this here: https://www.twosquares.com/our-process/magnetic-tape-restoration/ With this process, which is proven very safe for your tapes, we use lightly controlled heat to dry out the media. This process also happens to kill the Corona Virus just like a high fever would in the human body. All received magnetic tapes will continue to go through these processes which typically happens the first night after receiving your media. For film, slides and photos, we do NOT use heat. Rather, our new policy will be to let the media sit in the store untouched for 72 hours to allow for potential surface contact virus presence to die. This may extend the lead time of some orders but please understand that this is for our safety as well as yours.
Online Check-in Services:
In order to speed up the process of checking in new orders from the curb-side or if you have to come into the store, we request that you prefill out our new online media check-in form. https://www.twosquares.com/media-check-in-form/ This will allow us to have your basic information pre-loaded into our system and smooth out the process while minimizing human interaction.
Curbside Drop-off:
If you have a new project for us, feel free to email or call us for any questions before coming to the store location. When you are ready to drop off your project, please use the online check-in form above. When you come to our store, please call our main number at 763-400-4510 and we will bring up your order on our system to ask any additional questions needed. When we are ready, someone will bring a bin out to the curbside or next to your driver door. Please place your media in the bin and we will get your project started. Of course, we will communicate over the phone with any additional questions that may come up.
Online Payment Services:
Two Squares has had online payment services for some time, and we will be extending this capability to further ensure safety and minimize human contact. When your order is complete, you will receive an email with a secure link to our online payment service powered by one of the country’s largest and most reliable business credit card processing companies called Stripe.com. You can make your payment as soon as you see the email and we get notification so we can transition your project into a paid status. At this point, it is ready for pickup when you arrive. We are also happy to ship your product to you if desired. If you have difficulty with online payments or prefer to pay by cash or check, please let us know and we can handle the payment directly at the store or from your car.
Curbside Order Pick-up:
When your order is ready, and your payments have been made, feel free to stop by during regular business hours to pick up your media. We will bring your media to your car in a plastic bin so you can load it or we will load it directly into your car if you wish.
Online Delivery of Digital Media:
As always, Two Squares can offer delivery of smaller orders through our online download service. This works well for customers with audio files, image file sets, or less than 10 video files. Some customers do have challenges downloading large file sets over a slow or unreliable Internet link so be aware before choosing this option. If you do have a problem, we can always make the files available on a flash drive or hard drive after the fact that can be picked up in the store or shipped by mail. You can still bring in your own flash drives or hard drives or purchase new drives from our store. If you do use this service and don’t need your original media back, we will offer free disposal of your old media so you don’t have to come to the store after we have sent you your conversion. We generally keep your original media for a minimum of 30 days so you have time to get through your new converted media to make sure there are no issues. We also keep the original captured files for a minimum of 30 days and the final produced/edited files sets for a minimum of 6 months.
Thank you for your patience and loyalties through these difficult times. Now that we all have had the time to clean out our basements and go through our old memories, hopefully we can all enjoy them again and for years to come. We appreciate your business
Mike Fette Owner, Co-Founder and an “Original Square”