Wednesday, September 12, 2012

My Current Love/Hate Relationship...

I know you're just sitting on the edge of your seat waiting for an update to my Printing Squared... post from last week.

So this morning, twelve days later, I get another email from Prinstagram with my tracking info.  I was all eye-rolly as they had already refunded me and I hadn't received the package from FedEx and hadn't had time to go chasing it down. I clicked through because I got to wondering if they had received the package back and managed to resend it without needing a signature. The tracking info was for the same package and FedEx said that it was still sitting at their office. I called FedEx and they said they had it.  So as much as I didn't want to bother, it was pictures and so I drove 18 minutes each way on my lunch hour to go retrieve it.  I can't begin to tell you how much it irritates me to have my time wasted; I was irritated with myself that I couldn't stand not chasing the package down.

What I didn't remember through all of this was that I had ordered tiny cute little books with a magnet inside the back cover rather than more prints.  It pains me to say this, but they're adorable and totally something I would love if it weren't for the hoop jumping.  ::SIGH::


You could thread a little ribbon through the binding and do a collection of pics for the year and hang it on your xmas tree.  I hate myself for loving this idea.

I won't order from them again unless they get their shit together, but...ugh definitely cute.




Wednesday, September 05, 2012

Printing Squared...

Last week I realized that I hadn't printed any pictures in a very very long time.  Those of us who are online constantly are pretty much never far away from our favorite pics but I forget that I should send some to the grandparents every so often.  I have been slightly obsessed with the Instagram style of cropping everything into a square and so I went searching for somewhere that would either print directly from my Instagram account (follow me I'm fr3ckle), or would just accept my 1x1 uploads.

I had heard about Persnickety Prints from The House of Smiths which is a sassy DIY blog I follow and I googled around a bit and found Prinstagram.  I couldn't decide which was better since I hadn't used either before so I posted a small order with each with the intention of comparing the two.

Right off the bat Prinstagram cracked me up with their auto-response "thank you for your order" email.  It was snarky and made me laugh:

Email us at hello@socialprintstudio.com if you have any questions  and our sexy young customer service representative Taymoor J will get back  you as fast as he possibly can. He's pretty fast ;-)
so I emailed them back... womp womp they didn't reply.  I find them less amusing now.  :D

Meanwhile, Persnickety Prints was hard at work on the order that I placed on Thursday and managed to get it to me by Saturday.  Super fast.  I like super fast!!!111!  The prints were packaged quite nicely and made my heart pitter patter at their retro polaroidishness.  I've already sent some off.

Now Prinstagram is behind the game with their prints just shipping this morning.  At first I was all "pffft, a week later?" when in reality if it weren't for Persnickety showing them up, I'd be just thrilled with their ship date.  Let's see if they impress me.

Stay tuned...

*****

ANNNNND... I already have a super annoying update.  Before I even hit publish I went to look at an email that Prinstagram had sent me and found this bit of detail:
Your prints are sky high right now but soon they'll be at your door so please be sure you are there when they arrive so you can sign for your order. 
At which point I thought "Noooo.  Surely they wouldn't expect their customers to sit at home waiting for a shipment of photo prints.  They couldn't POSSIBLY have sent this package signature required."  So I checked FedEx and sure efuckingnough they did and I wasn't home and now I have to take time out of my day to track down this package.  The kicker is that they sent the email this morning telling me that my photos were on the way, but apparently they shipped on Monday (how is that possible Labor Day?) and so there was not even any possible way for me to predict when these pictures would arrive and arrange to receive them.

I have no place in my life for this type of noise.  Prinstagram is out - they will be hearing some disgust from me.

*****UPDATE*****

I used my serious FedEx irritation to send Prinstagram an email asking if they expected all of their customers to sit at home all day twiddling their thumbs and waiting for their order to arrive.  I was snarky and irritated and they had an explanation but... I'm not impressed.  Apparently since they are a small company FedEx gives them the choice of signature for ALL shipments or NO shipments (but then they can't send international).  So they chose ALL shipments.  I'm calling bullshit on either FedEx or Prinstagram as I happen to work full-time with FedEx as like my job yo and... we have every shipping option under the sun available to us.  If FedEx is causing this kind of hassle the good old post office will do quite nicely and at a fraction of the cost for a small business.  Anyhoo, Prinstragram was quickety quick with refunding my money with, I would think, the hopes that they never hear from me again, which is about likely.

I'm not saying don't use them.  Who knows (I certainly never will) they may have a fantastic product.  It simply isn't worth my irritation when there are no doubt 20 other online companies ready to print my square prints at a given moment.
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