Print Place Review: Booklet Printing – One Year Later
Design Product Reviews, Website & Internet Product Reviews July 7th, 2009
Once a Major Let-Down and Magazine Printing Nightmare; PrintPlace.com Has Come to Surprise Me
My husband and I own a marketing and design business where we print many large orders as resellers with several online printing companies; we also own and publish a local magazine in the city where we live. When seeking out a print vendor with good magazine printing prices for resellers, we chose Print Place to print our monthly magazine. We found that the price was pretty much unbeatable for the options we needed in press run.
To start, our first run of several thousand booklets looked great. The colors were sharp, the trim was darn-near perfect and overall we were very happy with the appearance of our magazine. We printed on a 3-day turn-around which meant our cost was a bit higher than had we been able to choose a 5-day turn-around option. We used their ground shipping which at the time was Fed-Ex and for the first 3 runs we got our magazine in 7-8 business days, like clockwork – their stated time frames were dead on.
Then came the problems…
Upon printing our fourth issue, Print Place notified us that they had opened a print plant in California – Oh Joy! – this was great news for us because we could hopefully use a less expensive 5 day turn-around and get the magazine in the same amount of time. I even called Print Place to confirm that they had a plant in California and was told that my order would automatically print at the closest plant, which was just a few miles from us. When looking at their turn-around time map I found that it said my area of California was in the 1-day transit time boundaries too! I happily placed my order on the 5-day in-house turn around with ground shipping and waited….and waited….and waited….
On the 5th business day the order finally shipped — from Texas!! I immediately called and asked to speak with a supervisor in order to clear up the matter. I got nothing but bad attitude from this woman and when I asked for her supervisor I was placed on “hold” and hung up on! I asked several times via phone and email if there was anyone in charge that I could speak with to voice my concerns with regards to their confusing “transit times” map and a lack of time-frames on their site – several times, I was ignored or told “someone would call me back” with no response.
By the time I got my order, 13 days after I placed it online at PrintPlace.com I was livid and hastily found another printing company to do business with.
Months went by and no one from Print Place bothered to check up or even wonder why suddenly a couple thousand dollars less in revenue was coming in via my credit card each month.
The grass wasn’t so much greener on the other side…
And without writing a full blown review here on the “other” print company (I will do that via a seperate post) I will just say that 6 months later I ended up back at Print Place out of last minute desperation and was pleasantly suprised!
I found that the CSR’s seemed far more pleasant than in the past and the different departments seemed to be in sync with one another. When needing to speak with the design department regarding custom trim settings it was duely noted in my account and the next CSR I spoke with was able to easily update me and give me helpful information!
When I placed my order this last time, I found that the order was printed and actually shipped locally and I got it MUCH faster than I had anticipated. The magazine print quality was fantastic, however I never had any issue with their print quality; it always seemed to be top-notch.
This time when I contacted Print Place’s customer service department it was to tell them that I was happy with my order and to ask if they would be able to somehow have my orders print locally by default. I was told that at this time it was not possible, but that my request would be forwarded on to those “in charge”. (Hey I am glad I wasn’t lied to this time and was actually told that it wasn’t possible) I only hope that they can sometime soon guarantee which plant your order would ship from in order to plan better as a print reseller – I would probably use them for far more of my print jobs if they could do that.
PrintPlace.com Quick Review:
Purchased: On a monthly basis, over a period of 1 year. Also used Print Place to print client orders several times within that time frame.
Print Place Benefits:
- Consistently great print quality including color matching and bleeds / trim
- High volume reseller discounts
- Short runs with alot of options
- Many order options and stops in between print quantities
- Quick answers from customer service
- Easy to track orders
- Proofing issues / hold-ups are emailed to you immediately
- Ability to submit art to go straight to press without art-checking
- Easy online ordering process with instant pricing
Print Place Drawbacks:
- No way to guarantee your order will be printed at a local plant for faster (cheaper) turn around/shipping
- Confusing “transit times” map on website isn’t accurate if your order doesn’t ship from a local plant
- Not many paper weight options outside of 16pt 14pt 100lb cover/book and 80lb cover/book (This mainly is something I would like to see them offer for magazine printers, such as a 60lb paper stock option)
The Mrs. gives PrintPlace.com 4/5
I actually wanted to rate them higher based on print quality, but based on the past it’s hard for me to forget the bad experience I had despite my more recent positive experience. I do however hope to revisit this post and update it with my further experiences with Print Place and hopefully give them an improved rating. I will say that I do intend to use them for my future booklet printing orders because you can’t beat their price for the quality and so long as they keep improving in the customer service area I am sure to use them for other jobs as well.
One last note! Be sure to check the site for coupon codes before ordering.
The Mrs. gives Issuu.com 5/5
