I received in the mail a promo flyer for this business called www.printplace.com. I needed business cards made for a convention/tour that I was going to attend on June 23rd seeing as it was June 4th I decided to give them a shot as their business looked a lot more legit than most on-line print houses.
So on June 4th I shot over an order for 2 different jobs for a total of 2,000 business cards [jobs #60925 ]. My total was $109.66 and I was excited about getting my new business cards.
On or around June 16th I was begining to wonder where my order was, so I went back to their site and logged into my printplace.com account. My job had been pulled from the "At-Prepress" status due to bleed errors. Now what gets me about this is that they never even bothered to send a notification alerting me to such a status change.
At this point (June 17th) I sent an e-mail to their customer service [[email protected]] with the following message-
"To whom it may concern,
I'm extremely frustrated right now in understanding your business practices. I ordered Business Cards on 06/04/07 and today I decided to check out how the order is going because it is way past the 10 business day turnaround. Now I find out that you haven't even started
printing the cards! Why did your company not send me an e-mail? Or make a call? I have a convention to attend to next week this is completely unacceptable.
I'm starting to question this way too automated of a system that you have, it may be more cost-effective but I'd rather pay more and have a frickin' person get a hold of me if my order is suspect of anything. PrintPlace.com couldn't even be bothered with sending me an e-mail.
Unless this order can be in my hands no later than 06/20/07 I want a full refund."
Their response was as follows (on June 18th)
"Dear Charles,
Thank you for submitting a ticket to our system. This order was returned to your account on 6/7/07 because our prepress technician noticed that it is missing a bleed. At this point, it is still in Art Suspect and has not been sent to press. Orders sent to press today by 6PM CST will ship at the end of the last production day ordered. This order is on a 7 day turn, which means if you were to waive the suspect art status and send it to press today, it would ship on 6/27. Even if you were to upgrade your turnaround time to 2 business days, your order would not ship until 6/20. If you choose to cancel this order, you will incur a $15 cancellation fee.
Sincerely,
Customer Service"
I responded 1 hour later with:
"Please have a live person call me. This is ridiculous. If you return an order and not send it to press you should notify your client via e-mail rather than have the client have to check your site to stay updated. I'm not paying 1 cent more, I will dispute this with my credit card company if need be.
-Charles F*
561-901-*"
I received a call shortly after from a customer service representative by the name of Wendy. She was at the time what seemed helpful and promised that I'd have the job in my hands no later than Thursday June 21st. Hell they'd even Next Day it to me at no additional cost.
When Thursday came around I had not gotten a package from FedEX or UPS so I decided to give www.printplace.com a call. Surprisingly Wendy answered. I asked where my business cards where. She replied that they were "... Being cut as we speak" and "that they'd be shipped next day that night so that I could recieve them before the convention Saturday."
Of course if that had happened and I'd gotten my business cards I wouldn't be here on usacomplaints.com filing a complaint.
To make the deal even sweeter www.printplace.com even charged my card for faster turnaround time although I never okayed such additional charges.
So here are my points:
1. When an order is placed through one of these shops on-line an e-mail MUST be sent with status updates (I've checked my "spam" folder - they're domain and e-mail addresses are not blocked by gmail)
2. A company SHOULD NEVER charge your card without further authorization.
3. A company SHOULD NOT make promises that they cannot fulfill especially with the urgency of business conventions. I'm not so mad at the $109 charge as I'm mad at the fact of the business I've just lost.
4. Any on-line service such as this SHOULD NOT expect clients to "sign-in" to their user accounts for constant updates. They should e-mail you with said updates on the e-mail address used to create your account.
Print Place is despicable. Do not do business with them. I found another print house on-line that was local and had even better rates and faster turnarounds. I'm not here to promote thier competitors business so I'm not using their name.
Basically stay the hell away from www.printplace.com
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