just don't pass off an ICC profile that's basically worthless while trying to convince the customer the lab is implementing a full/proper color managed workflow. They are not.
It's actually worse than what has been stated so far. In doing research for a Color Management seminar I held for a local photo club, I did research on a bunch of online labs, because my questionnaire for the students indicated a high interest in preparing/soft-proofing files to be sent to labs for printing.
After emailing, live chatting, and phone calling - the range of answers from Costco to some very high priced labs resulted in this range of results:
There are a bunch of labs who will tell you to send them any file format, any color space, etc. They infer that they are fully color managed. When it got down to it, the "front end" of their process converts everything they receive into sRGB jpegs for printing.
One lab proudly offers a single ICC profile for use with any of their paper selections.
Some want the file with the provided ICC profile used for soft proofing.
Other labs clearly tell you to soft proof to the ICC profile but to send them the soft proofed file in ProPhoto or Adobe RGB.
What I ended up telling the class is to do their homework with any lab, not to believe what the web site says, and that like John Arbuckle, "You get what you pay for."
Interestingly enough, Costco provides ICC profiles for each of their paper/printer combinations, and it is "by store location" specific and they are updated as needed.
There certainly wasn't "one answer" to give the class on how to prepare files for outside printing!
Rand