Why you should not use online invitations or vendors for personalized printing jobs
I know there is a big trend towards ordering everything online. Commodity products from reputable vendors may be a really a good deal. Personalized invitations or stationery orders are a bit more complicated to purchase on the internet. Here are a few “internet personalized printing” horror stories….
1. Over Christmas, my customer, Debbie, wanted to order Holiday cards for her office. She had been ordering from me for years. This year, she did some research online, and came in and asked me if I could help her with the cards she wanted. I researched it, and the price seemed right…and the company was receptive to working with me. We were all set to order, and I had a thought….I asked the vendor to mail us a sample card. The card arrived and I had a good laugh. It was the size of a small 3” by 5” enclosure card, and not the standard bill of fare for this customer. I called Debbie in to see, and we concluded that sometimes you just need to visit your stationer!
2. A customer named Cindy walked into our store on 2.17.11. She was having a party that was three weeks away. She asked if we could do rush invitations. We told her that we printed rush invitations in-house for a small up charge. She ordered, and then told us that she had actually placed an order online with an internet stationer. She ordered a Crane’s invitation, and it just wasn’t arriving. She called customer service, and was told “Crane’s orders take time. We cannot rush them.” She then called Crane’s and was told, “To get rush service with Crane’s, you must visit your local stationer.” Very interesting, and very true!
3. My customer Annabel came in to do her holiday cards. She ordered digital cards with a family photo on the front. She told me that the previous year she ordered them online, and she was returning to our store. Her 12 year old son piped in “Is that because you printed the wrong year on the cards, Mom?”….case closed…..
4. I recently heard of a family that used a video invitation to invite people to an anniversary party. One of their guests posted the video on youtube.com, and they began getting all kinds of responses from strangers who were NOT invited to the event. Not Good!!!
The last point I would like to make on this matter is that there really is a romance of paper. Holding a card or letter in your hands is a beautiful thing. The texture, the type, the color of the ink and the fact that someone actually sent you something REAL!!!!!
Just one woman’s opinion…