I’ve been using Overnight Prints for my business card, letterhead, and promotional mailer needs for about 3 years now. I have had nothing but positive experiences with them until this last order. Some background information is in order…
The company is based in Santa Ana, California, which is probably no more than a 1 hour drive from downtown Los Angeles on a good day. Every order I’ve placed has arrived at my address in either Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, or Lancaster (depending on where I was living at the time of the order) within 2-3 days of being printed, so I’ve never paid for Next Day or Second Day Air shipping, because that would be a waste of money. Their customer service has been pretty good. The one time I had an order where the cyan plate had printed just slightly out of alignment, I e-mailed them and had a reprint with no questions asked in 2 or 3 days. Their prices are reasonable, and the print quality is decent (I have noticed color shifts between print runs on identical products, probably due to their advice to design products with a generic CMYK profile instead of a specific profile for their press). At least, I can say that about their press in Santa Ana, where all of my previous orders have come from. We’ll see about the stuff that comes from their press in Louisville, Kentucky. Oh, did I forget to mention that now they have a press in Louisville, KY? Wow, that’s funny, because they forgot to mention that too.
So, I ordered my business cards last Friday, and paid an extra $2.00 to get priority printing (not priority shipping). Priority printing just bumps my print job up in their queue. I’m bribing them to cut in line, basically, so that I know I’ll get my stuff in 2-3 days, just in case they’re backed up. Well, I went and checked my UPS tracking number yesterday to discover with shock and horror that my business cards were in Chicago, Illinois, last night, because my cards were printed in Louisville, Kentucky (and I’m not even going to go into the fact that Chicago is not on the way to Los Angeles from Louisville, or how UPS is often the company that proves the Republicans wrong regarding their theory that private industry always does a better job than the government).
So, I e-mailed Overnight Prints’ customer service:
According to UPS, my order shipped out of Louisville, KY. I have a big problem with this. Every order I have placed in the past arrived at my address in Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, or Lancaster, CA, within 2-3 days of being printed. That, plus your mailing address in Santa Ana, CA, led me to believe that your printing facilities were in Santa Ana, CA. I upgraded my most recent order to a priority print job, but I did not upgrade the shipping, because every previous experience I’ve had with your company indicated that upgrading the shipping would be a waste of money, as UPS Ground usually gets things from Orange County to every place I’ve lived in 2-3 days. I wanted my order to arrive this week. According to UPS, it won’t arrive until the middle of next week. If you tacked on an extra week of shipping time by printing my order on the other side of the continent after I paid extra money to upgrade the priority of my order so that I might get it a day or so sooner, that makes me extremely unhappy with you. And that’s a shame, because every previous experience I have had with this company has been positive.
Today, I received this response:
Dear Valued Customer,
First allow me to apologize for the misunderstanding in our Ground Turnaround Times. However, if you click our “FAQs” tab located at the top of our webpage and click on the first question “What is our Turnaround Time?” you will see that the very last line of our answer clearly states, “Overnight Prints now prints nationwide. Please keep in mind that times in transit may vary depending on the printing location.” I do apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. Please feel free to contact us should you have any further inquiries.
We appreciate your business and hope you choose Overnight Prints in the future for all your printing needs. Please feel free to contact us if you have any additional questions at (888) 677-2000 or try our new chat feature under the FAQs tab at www.overnightprints.com. Remember to include all previous correspondence and your invoice number when contacting Overnight Prints.
Thank you,
Jennifer
Customer Care Representative
Overnight Prints
E-Mail: service@overnightprints.com
Office: (888) 677-2000
Frequently Asked Questions
http://www.overnightprints.com/main.php?A=faqs
First of all, my name is not Valued Customer. I signed my name to the first e-mail. This isn’t Valued Customer Photography here at www.valuedcustomer.com. Second, the subtext is, “Why don’t you read the FAQ, you idiot?” So this is where I, an allegedly “Valued Customer,” become an asshole:
Well, that’s not good enough. You need to put that disclosure somewhere in the actual ordering process, because repeat customers don’t often check FAQ’s. I shouldn’t have to check the FAQ every time I place an order just because you might have changed something. I feel like I’ve been ripped off, and I don’t feel very valued as a customer by your response, which is not an apology at all, but a dismissal of my concerns. And I will be taking my business elsewhere if I don’t get a real apology and the $2.00 I paid for priority printing refunded, because printing my order 2,000 miles away is not priority service.
Sincerely,
Damian Hopper
And now, the response:
Dear Valued Customer,
First allow me to once again sincerely apologize for any inconvenience our nationwide printing may have caused. However, no compensation can be offered at this time as it also clearly states in our Terms of Service Roman Numeral IX (which you check off that you agree to when placing the order) that:
“Overnight Prints is an international company with printing and shipping locations across the United States and Europe. While we make every attempt to ship from the location nearest you, your order may come from any of our locations. Please be advised that if you are ordering products with a tight deadline, you should select next day air, 2nd day air or 3rd day air to ensure a timely arrival.”
Please click on the following link for our Terms of Service: http://www.overnightprints.com/main.php?A=terms_conditions
Please feel free to contact us should you have any further inquiries.
We appreciate your business and hope you choose Overnight Prints in the future for all your printing needs. Please feel free to contact us if you have any additional questions at (888) 677-2000 or try our new chat feature under the FAQs tab at www.overnightprints.com. Remember to include all previous correspondence and your invoice number when contacting Overnight Prints.
Thank you,
Jennifer
Customer Care Representative
Overnight Prints
E-Mail: service@overnightprints.com
Office: (888) 677-2000
Frequently Asked Questions
http://www.overnightprints.com/main.php?A=faqs
Jennifer,
Why are you risking losing a repeat customer over a matter of $2.00? If it’s a matter of you not having the authority to refund the $2.00, then kick this matter up to someone who does, because I am not letting this go. If you’re going to give people the option of priority printing without priority shipping for an extra fee, and then go print them at some location that is other than the one closest to the shipping address after they pay that extra fee, that is unethical at best. If you appreciate my business, you will quit insinuating that I’m an idiot who can’t follow instructions with these dismissive non-apologies, quit addressing me as “Valued Customer,” because that is not my name (and I’m apparently not that valued, judging from your responses), and refund my $2.00. I’ve worked retail. I’ve had to deal with pain-in-the-ass customers in person, not just via e-mail. So I don’t like to be one. But right now, you’re not leaving me with much other choice.
Sincerely,
Damian Hopper
So, if you’re looking to have business cards, letterhead, envelopes, brochures, postcards, or anything else of that nature printed, I recommend doing business with a company other than Overnight Prints. They were a decent company a few years ago when they were smaller, but now they’re “international,” so they’ve got an international-sized ego. Now they bury everything in fine print on separate pages, and if you don’t look at all of that every time you place an order, well, you’re just a moron–a valued moron–and thanks for giving us extra money to do a crappier job. We hope we can fuck you again soon. Bullshit bullshit bullshit, we’re international and world-class now, and yadda yadda yadda. Have a nice day, loser.
As a business owner, client satisfaction is extremely important to me. I realize there are limits to that. You can’t let problematic people just walk all over you, but that cuts both ways. If you’re willing to lose a repeat client over a matter of $2.00, you should be working at the goddamn Department of Motor Vehicles, where your skill sets would be more appropriate. So, because it’s free and it doesn’t take very long, I pledge to e-mail Overnight Prints’ Customer Care Department a copy of every invoice for every order I ever place with one of their competitors for the rest of my life.
Additional evidence of their unacceptable business practices, now that I’ve bothered to look:
• Los Angeles Better Business Bureau - Overnight Prints Customer Reviews - Overnight Prints has a rating of CCC from the Better Business Bureau, which they claim is a good rating, but it’s a lot closer to the bottom of their scale than it is from the top.
• Overnight Prints is Anything but Overnight Printing | Peanuts to Profits with Thor Schrock
• mediabistro.com: Bulletin Board: Designers’ Corner: Topic: Issue with Overnightprints.com
• Overnight Prints (see comments)
• Amazon.com: Overnight Prints: Website Details - Overnight Prints has a 2.5-star vendor rating at Amazon.com. Speaking of Amazon.com, I have never had a problem not reviewing their FAQ and TOS every time I place an order with them.
• Beware Overnight Prints - Digital Grin Photography Forum - different problem, but contains another excellent example of how they think they can do no wrong, and everything is the customer’s fault.
• Broadsheet: Never Use OvernightPrints.com, Ever.
• Complaints Board | Overnight Prints
• Jason Burgess - Beware of OvernightPrints.com - with plenty more links to complaints
