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Posted on Jul 20, 2007 - 2:36am by John P. in Reviews, Work
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!
By the way, I LOVE comments! Please feel free to leave one below!
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From someone who used to work at VistaPrint (a.k.a ….’Pro sweatshop”)……I would highly suggest that noone purchase any of their products. I witnessed first hand how sloppy their work was (e.g cutting business cards, tshirts) and also the junk that is shipped out. Many times, profit is more important to them than sending high ONLY high quality products to customers. I have seen very bad quality business cards shipped to a customer (crooked cut, off color, dirt smudges, etc) that to me was completely unacceptable. Also, considering that they treat their employees like they work in a third world sweat shop, noone really says anything about it.
They also have a HUGE problem there with shipping mis-sorts where employees place packages in the wrong boxes (labelled by ’shipping service eg UPS, Canada Post, Fedex) and customers never receive their order and it ends up who knows where. This happened alot and it’s funny to hear Bernard Farrell’s comment from last August. THIS HAPPENS ALL THE TIME.
Also the products that Vistapritn offers (MAJORITY) are very cheap quality fabrics, paper, items that they purchase from 3rd world countries at the cheapest prices and than sell to a customer as a high end quality product when it is not and I know because I worked there…..especially their business cards!!!
PLAIN AND SIMPLE…….DO NOT BUY ANYTHING FROM VISTAPRINT!!!!!!! GO ANYWHERE ELSE! Trust me!
I had a really bad experience with Vista Print too! The quality of my cards was horrible and they were supposed to be ‘royal blue’ colored and they arrived ‘purple’!!! On the advise of a designer friend of mine, I tried this company I thought the quality was pretty good! Hope this helps!
Like others, I’ve had bad experiences with a few online printers, but since you asked for suggesting one, please try wymprint.com. I had a few prints of different sorts ordered from them and was very happy with their quality and timeliness. The price is also so much cheaper than others, comparing apples to apples.
I would like to thank you Bill, When I read your post I took a look at the recommended website and signed up for an account. It took me about 2-3 weeks after signing up for an account to actually put my order through (was waiting for my friend to finish up my design). I ended up paying approx $28 plus shipping on 1000 business cards (took a total of 6 days from putting the order to receiving the cards, which look amazing btw). My file had a little bit of color discrepancy and their customer support actually called me and walked me through how to change the color blue in the file to prevent a purple:ish outcome. When I used vistaprint before, I never received a single email reply or a call back if I left a message.
Oh and vistaprints so called FREE business cards are not free/cheap, the $$$ the charge for shipping is outrageous and your job takes like 2-3 weeks
I recently ordered my design on a glossy business card with a foil accent and complained about the first batch because they were cut crooked at the top. When I complained I was pleased to notice they very quickly sent out a new batch and appologised – I’m yet to receive that batch yet but hopefully they will be cut better. I am regretting using Vista anyway because the quality of the card isn’t very good – it is quite thin and rough aroound the edges definitely not like any other professional business cards. The foil accent however is absolutely lovely!
I’ve always used Mondo Print. They are really inexpensive and very high quality. Vista is ok, but there are other places out there with lower prices.
Have been backwards and forwards by email many times trying to get a resolution of my order – received cards in black and white instead of colour. Their customer service is appalling. No attempt to resolve. Will probably cancel my Mastercard payment. Strongly recommend NOT using Vistaprintat this time.
Vistaprint are crap. It looks like you’re getting a good deal until you progress further through the checkout after going through the many pages of them trying to sell you hats and mugs.
I paid around £8 to receive some postcards within 7 days (Its about £15 for any kind of normal postage speed). Its been 9 days now and nothing received, I just checked my order status and it says ‘Printing in progress’. Useless!!
There are so many better printing providers out there.
Visaprint, Germany had a great offer of self-designed wall calendars for about $12 each (even cheaper if you ordered bulk and I intended to order around 20 as Christmas presents). I just spent most of my Sunday designing my calender, choosing and uploading the photos etc. At 7 a.m this morning, the calender offer was still available; two hours later I logged on again to place my order and the price per calender had doubled. Needless to say, they won’t be getting my business and I am complaining on every blog I can find. I have ordered from them before and had the same problem as one person here – by the time I checked out to order my “free” business cards and had clicked “no” on about 10 pages of offers for mugs, baseball caps, fridge magnets, cards, letterhead etc., the postage was about 3 times what one would normally pay. I also received almost daily emails until I had to remove myself from the site. It’s a pity because, as opposed to some people here, I was quite happy with the quality of their stuff.
I agree with you Rob, VistaPrint does suck. I order some business cards and they were cut wrong. So disappointed. Plus they try to sell you other BS you dont need. I switch over to FuzeDot Printing.
VistaPrint is a consumer-grade printing service provider. It’s like going to your local copy shop to get some stuff made up. They thrive because they cater to the everyday person that doesn’t know that much about printing–the convenience factory plays a big role. And 21 days for shipping is WAY too long. For quality and better prices, search around for a commercial-grade printer and ask them about quality guarantees, etc. I use VividColor.com but there are plenty others that you can find through Google. I hope this helps.
Thanks to the comments and some suggestions, I did not order from vistaprint and looked at two sites mentioned above, wymprint and mondoprint. wymprint.com was $5 dollars cheaper for 1000 business cards, so I decided to go with them. I registered, paid and uploaded my file in a minute or so, very fast and easy. Then in couple of hours, I received an email to check my proof. It was correct and I approved it. I should tell you that my design is not easy to print and I have not seen anyone printing them to my full satisfaction, but when I received my cards from wymprint, I was pleasantly surprised with them. They are as perfect as I can imagine them to be. Thanks to this blog and all the comments made by people. I now found the printer I’ll be dealing with.
Great thanks for these reviews! I was going to reco. vistaprint to my brother to get his biz cards (which I designed) printed. I hadn’t heard how bad they are, and was happy to provide other options instead.