A couple of weeks ago I decided to order some business cards that I could hand out instead of having to write down my domain name on pieces of paper for people when my blog comes up in conversation. So, I went over to VistaPrint.com and gave their process a whirl.
It took me about 45 minutes to search through all of their different designs until I had finally decided on and customized my new cards. By the time I was done I ordered two sided, full color, glossy cards on the heaviest weight paper. Yeah, I’m a sucker for upgrades.
I found the entire process to be relatively simple. You pick the design you want, fill in a form with your info, then customize things by deleting unused fields, dragging others around to where you want them, and changing fonts if necessary. All in all, if you can use MS PowerPoint, you can create your own business cards.
I was generally pleased with the order process with only one exception… the pricing “scheme”. When you are designing your products the prices are really cheap. But where they get you is at the very end when it comes time to pay for shipping.
The standard shipping is 21 days for about $7.50. You can bump that up to 7 days for $15 or 3 days for even more. Anyway, when it came right down to it even with the shipping it was cheaper than local printers as well as a couple of other online printers that I looked into.
Now, after I completed the order for 1,000 of these babies for a grand total of $47 including shipping, the system game me an offer to get an extra 500 for only $4.50 more, so I took it. This means that 1,500 full color, two sided, heavy duty, glossy cards came to a grand total of $51.46 delivered.
Over the next week I began to receive e-mails almost every day from VistaPrint.com trying to sell me more and more stuff. It was so annoying that I had to actually use their unsubscribe function in the e-mail. It seems to me that when a company is this aggressive you also have to worry about them selling your address to other companies.
About a week later the cards arrived in the mail. Generally speaking I have to say I’m a bit disappointed with them, but only for one reason. In the screen capture above – which is what I saw when I was proofing the cards – all of the black on the front of the card is clearly the same color dark black. But when I received the cards there is a distinct color differential between the photo area at the top and the rest of the black background. To me, this destroys the aesthetics of the cards, though others have not noticed or told me it looks fine.
I intend to contact the company to ask them to be reprinted as they appear on screen, then we’ll find out what kind of customer service they actually offer. But all in all I would say that so far I would not order from them again. The combination of Spamming me, extraordinarily high shipping costs, and marginal quality printing don’t leave me wanting to rush out and order more from them.
If anyone else knows of a great online printing company please share your experience down in the comments. Thanks!
VisaPrint drive me up the wall with their emails. Earlier this month I finally unsubscribed… but I *still* received their emails. I ‘unsubscribed’ again, and I received two emails 48 hours later! They seem to have a habit of making mistakes in their first email, and then sending an apology 24 hours later. I swear it’s just a ploy to get their name in your inbox twice.
Here’s to hoping I don’t receive anything else from there!
Jamie, the other question is, what did you order from them and how did it turn out?
I ordered my first business cards from Vistaprint.com and they came out looking great. I did have two logo design clients that had some trouble with their printed cards not looking as nice as they had hoped (color wise), but other clients were very happy with them.
I don’t receive any emails from them any more, but maybe my email program is tossing them before I even see them.
I tried out PrintingForLess.com – http://printingforless.com/ for when I needed more cards and LOVE what they delivered. I didn’t go with vistaprint again because I wanted to test out Printing For Less because of their affiliate program. You can view an image my new cards here:
My new business cards have arrived – http://alove4horses.com/blog/new-business-cards/
I too ordered cards from Vista Print. For me, who is not great with ordering anything on line, I found the ordering process to be fairly easy to follow. However, when my cards arrived the font was so tiny that nobody could read my phone number or email address on them. I wrote to them immediately explaining the problems. Much to my surprise I received new cards in the mail with a larger font – and get this, at NO Charge. Now that my friends is good Customer Service. They did the right thing! Good going VisatPrint! Diana G., Los Angeles.
If you haven’t tried http://colorprintingpros.com you may not be getting the best bang for your buck when it come to online printers.
This company’s quality is truly state of the art. For the value they deliver they are truly exceptional.
On cards they offer a choice of heavy 14 or extra heavy 16 point card stock both at the same low price. They include free UV coating on all their cards. Other coating are also available.
The price that’s quoted is the price charged. They never try to up charge or over sell. If you opt in they will send you periodic discount offers, but never spam you. If you have a bussiness that exhibits at trade shows they will send you timely discounts Just tell them what you are printing and you will receive an email discount code.
The only surprise is the brilliance of the color and the incredible service. They are not the largest company and that’s a big advantage. Every job is as important to them as it is to you and they won’t let you down.
If you need any kind of sales and marketing literature check out their site.
Fred
I’ve heard a lot of complaints about Vistaprint …
I suggest ooprint.com
They have great quality business cards, including a FREE business card offer. I’ve always been satisfied with their printed products.
There’s a company called superiorlabels.com. They don’t have business cards and are more into address labels and rubber stamps. But one important thing they don’t do is spam you to death. They don’t call you or put you on any lists. They stand by their product in the hopes that it will generate return business.
John P.,
Watch out for mysterious $14.95 monthly charges on your credit card in about a month or so for some bogus “Rewards” program. These will be from VistaPrint. This is an unethical scam that they are foisting on their customers. This happened to us, and when we called repeatedly to complain, it took several months for the charges to cease. My credit card company said they get these kinds of complaints all the time. If you will search on the web, you will find a lot of complaints regarding the bad business practices of VistaPrint.
See this BBB website in Massachusetts, and you will see that VistaPrint is at the top of the list with an Unsatisfactory Reliability Rating.
http://www.bosbbb.org/news/complaints_top_10.asp
Thanks for the heads up Dave. That really sucks, but I’ll keep an eye out for the charges. :-(
John
I never signed up for vistaprint.com’s affiliate program because of the amount of information they requested in their form. They wanted to know way too much — way beyond any affiliate program I have seen before and I just didn’t feel comfortable with it.
I also quit recommending vistaprint when they didn’t return my
email questions are a timely bases and wouldn’t phone me when I asked them too about a client’s print order. I felt they had customer service problems – and good customer help is big in my book.
But this monthly charge of $14.95 is really bad news. Why is it that so many large companies want to hurt their own customers? I don’t get it.
I wholeheartedly agree with John P’s statement in this post:
I recently tried out vistaprint’s free business cards and was disenchanted with VistaPrint after their 3rd (of 6) attempts to sell me more than I needed. I was surprised and that VistaPrint would spam its customers – especially with that bogus $14.95/month rewards system they’ve cooked up . . .
I had success with GotPrint.com – they are descriptive about the requirements for the business card.
-Bryon
P.S. The issue with the 2 colors of black might be an issue with RBG vs CMYK – you need to have “rich black”; something like 63C, 52M, 51Y, 100K. Not just 100K. Good Luck!