Shutterfly.com

...is it?'''
Put simply, Shutterfly.com is website designed to help you organize your digital photos and order prints or photographic gifts online. It's a bit like your virtual 'SnappySnaps' or 'Boots', if you will.

'''Site layout and Organising you photos:'''
The site itself is designed rather nicely. It has that family feel to it, with images of adults playing with children, creating the urge to make keepsakes and get ...
...thing that attracted me to Shutterfly.com is that they can turn any digital image into a beautiful keepsake or gift. Such as printing onto t-shirts, keyrings, canvases, mouse mats, puzzles, tins, you name it, they can probably do it. I've had excellent experience with ordering these sort of products face to face in shops, but I have never ordered online. Whilst I used to send off films to companies such as 'Tru-print', I've never ordered digital ... more

What is it?
Put simply, Shutterfly.com is website designed to help you organize your digital photos and order prints or photographic gifts online. It's a bit like your virtual 'SnappySnaps' or 'Boots', if you will.

Site layout and Organising you photos:
The site itself is designed rather nicely. It has that family feel to it, with images of adults playing with children, creating the urge to make keepsakes and get your treasured family photos printed with them. The colours are soft and pastel in colour, and each part of the main site is labeled fairly well, to ease finding what you want to do. It's very easy to get your photos on the website. In your account you have the facility to create albums. So, if you have lots of pictures of cats, you can make an album called 'Cats' and pop them all in there, lovely! For customers, the storage space is unlimited, even offering a feature to go 'pro' and sell your photos for your own fee!

To order:
Once you've uploaded your photos, you click which one's you want printed from your albums. Then tell the computer how you want them produced (what format), the quantity, where they're to be sent, then pay, simple. If you want duplicate copies, it's very easy to select more than one copy of a certain photo. If you are just ordering prints, you also get the option of size (4x6, 5x7 etc) and the finish (matt or gloss). There are two main delivery options. You can get them delivered to your house and the cost varies on the speed of the delivery, or you can get them sent to your local Target (if you're in America) for free, but this only applies to photo prints, not gifts.

What other features does the site offer?:
As you can upload photos, there's also a section that allows you to share your images with people. This is simply done, where all you have to do is selected which pictures and albums you want to share, then click on the relevant links and add in the email addresses of those you want to see your pictures, then Shutterfly will send them a link. There's also an online community that allows you to post your photos and talk about them, this is supposedly to share ideas and inspire each other with creative ideas for new projects.
A nice little feature within the site, is if you are stuck for ideas, you can search for photo gift ideas by occasion. For example, in the Shutterfly store, you can browse through their 'wedding' or 'baby' section to get lots of handy ideas.

Keeping in touch:
As with most websites that are selling things, once you sign up, you will inevitably get email updates and offers. Shutterfly send out emails, it would seem once or twice a fortnight, offering discounts on selected products. If there is a holiday/festival coming up, then more than likely these emails will increase, as would the offers, in order to make us part with more of our hard earned cash (grrr).

Good for gifts?:
The thing that attracted me to Shutterfly.com is that they can turn any digital image into a beautiful keepsake or gift. Such as printing onto t-shirts, keyrings, canvases, mouse mats, puzzles, tins, you name it, they can probably do it. I've had excellent experience with ordering these sort of products face to face in shops, but I have never ordered online. Whilst I used to send off films to companies such as 'Tru-print', I've never ordered digital prints online. But how hard could it be, I thought to myself…and gave it a go.

My experience:
I first came across this site as I wanted to make something special for my sister's 30th birthday. I've also temporarily moved to the states recently, so I wasn't able to pop down to my local photo printers and order something (I'm still finding my way around), I needed to find something online and have sent to her. I wanted to create some art and chose her son (my beautiful nephew) as the subject. As it's her 30th, I wanted to make it extra special somehow, more than just a print. So, I decided that I would get the art printed onto a jigsaw puzzle, and send over the pieces in a series of parcels, kind of like an interactive gift. What with her birthday being mid-march, taking into account the production time and delivery times, I needed to be prepared.

In mid February, I spent a good couple of hours designing my work. I found the right photo that I wanted to work with and began creating. I enjoyed it. So, after registering on Shutterfly, I created my photo album (for the gift) and uploaded my 'art'. I selected how I wanted my work printed…on a puzzle. At this stage, I found out that I needed to increase the pixilation…grrr. I should have known this. Cursing myself profusely, I got to redoing my work. But really, I didn't mind too much as my '2nd edition' ended up looking better than my original. I thought this was a nice feature of the website, it was able to tell me that my work would look pixelatted by having it blown up, must be a good website, I thought. When I finished, I got to uploading my 2nd image and proceeded to the 'order' section. I had to do some cropping as my image size was slightly too big, so I readjusted my image using another 'cropping' feature on the website. So, all ordered, I had to rearrange the borders, but that was fine too. I paid approx 18GBP in all, including delivery, which I thought was quite reasonable, considering I didn't have to leave my house!

A very excited 5 days later, I received my puzzle. However, the lab had cropped off MORE than I had. In my work, I had included writing in the top left hand corner and bottom right hand corner. Both sections of writing had been half missed off. How bloody annoying! Not only had they buggered up my order, but I had lost a week and my post office 'deadline' was getting closer and I was back to the beginning! I looked on the site for the help pages and found the number to call customer services. The call took much longer than I had anticipated, with me being left on hold for long sections at a time (thank god for skype), eventually they told me that they would give me another puzzle and free next day delivery. Next day delivery normally costs around (a massive) 12GBP, so I was grateful for the gesture. They credited my account accordingly and they also suggested that I re-edit my work to make the writing not so close to the edges. Although this suggestion meant spending MORE time editting my work, I would rather do that, than for them to mess up again. So, I did just that, uploaded my 3rd image (deleting the other 2 in my account, to make sure no confusion was to be had by anyone), making sure the borders offered more space for potential 'editing' at the lab.

2 days later (not exactly 'next day', but hey), I received my 2nd puzzle, and AGAIN the same problem had happened. But I only noticed this time due to my thorough checking. I'll explain…When you get the puzzle, it comes in a lovely tin that has the same image on the lid (so you know what your puzzle looks like). Well on the tin, it looked fine, although there was some very slight cropping to one set of the wording, but you could read the words fine. I was happy. So, I 'did' the puzzle to check all the pieces were there and prepare for it to be sent 'section by section' to the UK. I didn't really think there would anything wrong, but the perfectionist in me wanted to check…and there was still FURTHER cropping. The image on the tin betrayed the puzzle itself. Bloody marvelous! By this time, I was starting to get furious. Doesn't anyone at these labs check the product? Obviously not, so the lack of attention in the making process and lack of due care to customer satisfaction and quality control, began to rile me. In my experience with UK photographic labs, everytime there's a problem, it's been brought to my attention BEFORE any product was made (such as large prints, mugs etc), and this particular attention to customer service and customer satisfaction is something I value highly. So, evidently, Shutterfly don't regard such things as necessary!

So, onto the Customer Service department again. I was given an apology and got another puzzle and next day delivery, although this time I had to be put through to Head Office for more help. I was told again, not to put anything 'important' too close to edge…which translated means they don't know how much of the image they will cut off. Personally, I don't think any of the image should be cut off and they should have workers who oversee this. Even if the image is the wrong size, they should automatically shrink it, so it all fits, and fill in the rest with a border, and if THAT looks ridiculous, then they should inform me…or am I being unreasonable? I don't think so.

So, for what felt like the hundredth time, I reworked the whole image, re-uploaded and got next day delivery. Just when I though I was getting somewhere, I noticed that in 'my order history' part of the website (where all orders are recorded) it said that I should expect the puzzle in 5 days! By this time, I didn't have 5 days! I phoned customer services to find out what was going on. The first chap said to me that as I had my puzzle lost in the post, I should expect a replacement to arrive next week…!!!???? WHAT??? Firstly I had not lost anything, and secondly he obviously didn't listen to me, very bad customer skills…I suppose it didn't really help that everyone I had ever spoken to at customer services had English as 2nd language, so it made complete understanding rather difficult and ultimately, frustrating. I demanded that I talk to a supervisor (as obviously the first person was looking at the wrong account or was just plain incompetent), who explained it would take 5 days as I would have to include the production time (which it doesn't clearly state on the site, by the way, when trying to work out how long something will get to you)….This confused me, so I questioned that if you pay $25 for next day business delivery, it can really take 5 days from date of order. What a ridiculous service!

ANYWAY…I gave up. I got my 3rd puzzle, and lo and behold, the tin showed an image that was once again CROPPED (even though I moved the letterering adequately as advised)…but once I had completed the puzzle, the actual thing didn't look as bad as the tin. There was still cropping, but the message could be read legibly. There doesn't seem to be any harmony by the two components, but conflicting images between the tin image and the puzzle image. I well and truly feel like I have had a very sloppy service and wasted a lot of money on a product that is not the quality I would expect.

The not-free freebies:
Usually as you soon as you sign up, you are offered freebies. I was offered discounts and up to 35 free prints. Nice! There is a link to 'your special offers' in teeny tiny writing, right at the bottom of your account page (I only knew about it because someone who worked for Shutterfly customer services, told me about it over the phone, whilst I was complaining about the puzzle!) that tell you what introductory offers you are entitled too. So, the freebies? Well, I never found them to be FREE. For one offer of 25 free prints, I had to pay 2GBP postage, which doesn't exactly break the bank, but if they'd have said something like 'free printing, you just pay postage' I would have probably not bothered. Then, I was offered 10 free prints, to be picked up in store. I thought this was a nice opportunity to have hard copies of some of my favourite digital photos that just sit in my hard drive. But surprise surprise, you have to pay 2GBP to pick them up for processing fees. I only found this out in my confirmation email. Not exactly free (or fair) is it??? Needless to say, I haven't picked them up yet. Well if they call me, I'll demand I have them free or not at all and to stop wasting my time…silly little beggars (yikes, I sound like my mother). And as for the 25 images I got printed, guess what…THEY WERE CROPPED and missed off parts of the original digital image.

The after-math:
Well, I'm still getting offers by email (such as spend $25 and get free delivery etc) but I ignore them…and then I breathe deeply! I haven't cancelled my account yet, as I'm still of the middle of complaining about the whole thing to them. My sister got the puzzle, 2 weeks after her birthday but didn't mind because she loved it and all the family can help put together the puzzle. I apologized profusely to her, but she knew it wasn't my fault, so my guilt was lessened. I am bitter about Shutterfly.com messing up so spectacularly and adding insult to injury, is that I was so organized and planned the order dates well ahead of time.

Conclusion:
Personally, I will never be using Shutterfly.com again. They can't print photographs properly without missing off part of the picture, a flaw which I find is quite fundamental for a photographic lab!…Or am I asking too much? Whilst I find the site relatively good value, I can't help thinking that the only reason it is priced so cheaply, is because they use machines instead of workers, lowering their overhead costs…and lowering that eye for detail that a photographic assistant usually comes in very handy for! The site itself is relatively easy to navigate, apart from it's 'hidden', 'special offers' section. I wouldn't recommend using it, unless you are desperate and really don't care if the photo you have printed comes out different somehow to the image taken on your camera!

Update:
I have since received a full apology from Shutterfly and all my money back. So, I have 2 bad puzzles, 2 bad tins, 1 ok puzzle and 1 ok tin (well, no, my sister has those) and my money back. Where's SnappySnaps when you need them?

Not recommended

Thanks for reading ☺

© MarcoG 2008 

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