vistaprint.co.uk > Reviews (113)

Vistaprint.co.uk are a company that offer free products such as business cards and other business stationery. I decided to order my husband some business cards for his self-employed courier business as a colleague of his had recommended vistaprint.

Wow, what a mistake that was! I shall review vistprint's website and what they do first, but please ensure you read the review in full. Don't miss the small-print whatever you do!!

VISTAPRINT.CO.UK
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Vistaprint sells all sorts of office stationery including business cards, letterheads, rubber stamps, notepads, postit notes, return address stickers,

According to the website, Vistaprint is an international company.

IS IT EASY TO USE?
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Yes it is. You simply click on the item you require, lets say a business card. You can chose 1 of about 8 designs for free, or loads more if you want to pay for it. You are then given boxes to complete to enter your personal information. It is very easy to do and fast too. You can get 250 business cards free if you have vistaprint logo on the back of the cards. If you want plain on the back, or words of your choice it will cost you more.

You go through the order process, if you are vat registered you can supply your number and they will remove the vat. Otherwise, the only charges you incur are postage. You can also buy a futher 250 business cards for around £6 at the same time. After purchasing the business cards, we also purchased compliments slips, postit notes and note pads, all free, you pay only for postage. The cards are printed on good card and the printing is of very good quality.

Delivery can be cheap if you opt for slow mail which is 21 days, however all my orders arrived within 7 days which was good.

FREE? - SO WHAT'S THE CATCH???
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How cynical, whats the catch, surely there isn't one? Well, unfortunately there is. A very big catch.

I mentioned to a friend that we had bought these cards from vistaprint and she said, watch out they will take £10 a month from your bank account. I expressed surprise at this because I had not noticed anything about this when I purchased the cards. 2 days later I mentioned this to my hairdresser and the lady in the next chair said, don't use them they will take money from your bank account! So in 2 days I had 2 people telling me this. There was an option to get £10 off your next order, but it stated that you had to join their VIP club, so I DID NOT click on this offer. DID NOT, I repeat!!!!!

THIS BIT TAKEN FROM THE WEBSITE (below)
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As part of the registration process for the program, a customer is required to enter his or her email address twice, and click the "YES" button stating that the customer agrees with the following statement:

"By clicking "Yes" I have read and agree to the Offer Details displayed to the left and authorise VistaPrint to securely transfer my name, address and credit card information to the service provider for VistaPrint Rewards."

Following acceptance of the offer, the customer's information is then transferred to the service provider for the program via a secure encrypted link.

Customers are then sent a confirmation email which confirms enrollment, a subsequent email activating the customer's VistaPrint Rewards Account, and a reminder email at the end of the 30 day free-trial period. These three emails are sent to the email address the customer entered in the registration step. END OF SECTION FROM WEBSITE=====

The business cards duly arrived and we were very pleased with them, so much so that I ordered some for myself and some for my brother-in-law. These also arrived and we were very happy with them.

My husband then had his credit card bill and on it was an entry for £9.95 for wards.com with a phone number. Neither of us knew what this was for, so I googled wards.com which got me knowhere, so I then googled the phone number. I was then greeted with pages of unhappy vistaprint customers, including reviews on dooyou and ciao. Silly me, I didn't think to look on ciao before I used vistaprint. Well that has now taught me a lesson hasn't it. Never buy anything without checking it out first!!

Basically wards.com is one of vistaprints many alias' that it uses to take money on a regular basis from your credit card or bank account. This is for membership for the so-called VIP Club.

I have no idea what this club offers as I did not look at it on the website and I am afraid to sign back in to check it in case I get signed up again too! From what I can gather on google, this is a scam in that a box is ticked unless you untick it and its very hard to see and nobody notices it and then gets £9.95 a month taken from their bank account until they stop it. I know that some people who don't check their statements etc have lost hundreds of pounds.

The section that I have copied states that you have to enter you email twice and agree to it, which we defintely DID NOT do!!!

SO WHAT CAN YOU DO ABOUT IT?
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Well, there is a place on the vistaprint website to cancel membership, although of course you can't really do this until they have taken at least one payment as you don't know that it exists until then. There is also a toll-free number, but it's american so I don't know how free it would actually be??

We also emailed vistaprint to ask for a refund of the £9.95, but of course have not heard back from them. I have heard that they will refund if you keep on at them, but it takes a long time and they get stroopy because you "signed up" willingly and "should read properly"!! It is all very well to say that what they are doing is legal, but it is certainly very underhand. My husband telephoned Tesco, his credit card, and they said that they get this all the time and that they cannot refund the money because it was taken with his authority because of the website and while they think it is wrong there is nothing that they can do about it.

I have got my husband to write a letter to vistapint.co.uk asking for a refund and also stating that he withdraws authority for them to take any further payments from his card. That is the trouble with credit card payments, it is very tricky to stop them once started as the credit card company can't do anything at their end.

I checked my statement and saw that my purchases were within the last 30 days, and you an cancel the account within 30 days, so I just hope that I caught them in time, or I could have 2 lots of £9.95 a month going out of my account too. I am also going to look into Trading Standards, although I presume that I won't be the first person to have mentioned it to them, and presumably they can't do anything about it because it's still going on.

SO WOULD I RECOMMEND VISTAPRINT?

Err NO!! Not in a million years, ever, no way at all, no, never. You get my point?. Yes you can get free (cheap ) business cards, but its really not worth the hassle.

If you do decide to purchase from them, then please please please, check very carefully when you checkout. Read every inch of the screen and when a box pops up offering you a discount, don't just close it down, make sure you read it first so that you aren't automatically opted into something you don't want and can't afford.

www.vistaprint.co.uk

(But please, it really isn't worth it!! Don't come running to me when £9.95 a month starts disappearing from your account because I shall say I told you so!!)

The ratings below are for the website and the product therefore I have been honest and rated that as ok which it is apart from value for money, because although it looks cheap on the surface, a monthly fee of £10 isn't cheap at all. Unfortunately there isn't a rating for rip-off section!