In the world of small businesses, vistaprint.com is a pretty popular service. They offer almost everything under the sun: business cards, stationery, car clings, t-shirts, etc. Recently, I ordered some supplies from them and will share how my orders turned out.
I decided to try VistaPrint because they seemed to have a pretty easy online ordering system. And with the addition of Retailmenot’s coupon codes, you get a great bargain price.
In reality, the bargain isn’t that great. VistaPrint’s online template is not reliable at all. First, the lines are not identified on the page so I can only guess that one is the full bleed threshold and the smaller one is the actual trim size.
I ordered three items from them: business cards, letterhead, and address stickers.
For two of the items, the business cards and the address stickers, the printing came back noticeably off center. I asked for a reprint on the business cards because they were so off, there was a band of blue on one side of the cards. I’m guessing that this is the edge of someone else’s cards. So that’s a whole print run of horribly off-centered cards.
Getting customer service to redo my cards was pretty easy. With the volume they get, I don’t think the company really cares. So if you do get something bad, it should be fairly simple to get a refund or an exchange. But the customer service center was obviously not in the United States. I had a hard time understanding the person on the other end. The phone call was longer and louder than it should have been.
Unfortunately, the replacement set I received is also of inferior quality. The centering is still noticeably off, but I’m just going to shave the sides or something. But get this—this set came back in a completely different color. The ink must have been running out in the machine or something, because the white of the card shows through the color background. I don’t think I’m ever going to get an acceptable set so I’m cutting my losses and will not order something as important as business cards from them again.
The address labels were also off center, but issues like this are less important on this product. It’s hard to find a wide selection of colors out there (and I’ve tried) so I think I will do my reordering from VistaPrint.
The printing on the letterhead is acceptable, but the quality of the paper is really poor. The business cards suffer from the same problem. In both products, the materials feel cheap. The business cards are instantly recognizable as low-quality card stock. The letterhead is on some generic glossy paper. If you are expecting the recognizable texture of business cards and letterhead paper, you’ll be in for a disappointment.
Still, at least the letterhead is usable for now. And I couldn’t have expected too much given the price.
Their website also freaks me out. It’s constantly trying to get you to click on things and if you don’t read the fine print, you’re going to end up with extra product orders or monthly subscription fees. Even though I clear my cookies and personal data every day, the VistaPrint site always has my information up when I return to it. That is not cool.
In the future, I will still go to VistaPrint. I will probably order test items and less important business products from them because you really can’t beat their prices. For the more important business branding items, I’ll spend the money and get some personal attention paid to the project.
Have you used VistaPrint before? How did your experience compare to mine?
Tags: Starting a Business by Ms. SP
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