Have anyone ordered from Photobookmart before? I chanced upon a groupon deal and seeing so many people have signed up for it, I decided to sign up for my very first photobook deal.
After hearing so much from a male colleague of mine, who did a yearly photobook for his family, I thought it would be fun, though I am not sure which shop he ordered from. I always thought that for a guy who is willing to spend such precious time doing things for his family, is an endearing sweet moment.
How tough can it get, or so I thought? With a little bit of homework done for selecting the photos and including captions for selected pictures as well as some history on the places I have been to, I was on my way to creating my perfect book!
Its not cheap. I paid $49 for an album supposingly worth $103. Several months later, I saw a similar offer for just $29. Sigh.
The starting route was a steep learning curve as I tried to navigate thru the downloaded software. The customer service replies have been prompt and helpful but impersonal and brief. Its like writing emails to a robot who replied with an automated short answer. Nonetheless, its not the worst I have encountered so I should be glad. What is most important is that my questions have been replied.
Once you get the hang of using the software, its actually quite fun but tedious process. One mistake I learnt is not to get the pictures too near the binding because I only realized that after I received my book and its too late. I thought so long I kept the pictures on the dotted line, the pictures would be fine but the dotted line only served as where the book binding is. Gee.
An advantage of using the photobookmart is that someone is there to oversee the process before sending it for printing. A background picture of mine was corrupted and a lady wrote to me, asking me to re-load the pictures but there were no instructions on how I can re-load it because my groupon code have been used and I cannot use it to enter in the checkout box.
Just wondered why they cannot tell me about my pictures being so near to the binds?
The uploading after the end of the project is a nightmare! 5 hours later, the computer is still trying to upload my album to their website. I wrote in to Photobookmart and their robotic answer is that my images may be too big. I can' believe that is presumed to be my fault because you, as a photobook company is in a business where speed and bandwidth are of utmost importance and heavy images are bound to happen, how can you blame it on a consumer who did not even utilize to the maximum of 40 pages?
With the current better cameras in the market boasting of bigger megapixels, I am supposed to compress all my pictures just to suit your slow server? It certainly sounds ridiculous and lame to me.
After 5 hours, where I woke up in the middle of the night to finish off the last step in keying all the details before sending it off for printing, I receive an email 2 days later to be informed that one of the pictures has a corrupted background. With no instructions on how to re-load it, I read the website again and found a simpler way to upload the files to the server. This time round, it took 3 hours. Still long, but better than waking up in the middle of the night.
3 days later, I still did not receive any replies from the lady to confirm if she have received my files despite sending 2 emails to her. Sigh. On the phone, she was friendly and polite and assured me that she would revert back to me.
Later in the day, I was told that my file is still corrupted. Sigh. I decided to change the picture of the background to minimize all these to-and-fro emails which are time consuming and thankfully, everything has been alright thereafter.
I received my book and other than the pictures being so near to the binds, I am a happy customer. The paper is akin to a magazine texture and style. I only wish that I can incorporate more pictures to the cover page. Currently I can only include one picture in the center of the cover page. And I also hope that their customer service can be further improved.
As a Singaporean, we are so used to things being efficient, making us an impatient lot.
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