Wow, What a headline. You're probably thinking that I'm just writing this because of some personal vendetta or bad blood right? No, I'm writing this to warn other people to steer clear of Printerpix. This is our review of Printerpix and the massive waste of time and money they were for us. We have the proof of what a terrible company Printerpix was.
Our story begins with a Groupon. I've had some great deals on prints through Groupon before and I love to use Groupons to try different companies and see who I want to go for when it comes to print services. There's a lot of great deals there and a lot of great companies there that you should totally check out. Printerpix is not one of them as you shall see.
Our story begins with an ad on Groupon for 10x10 metal prints at $5 each. I was already looking for a company to do prints at this size for a project I was working on and this seemed like a good deal. Groupon was also offering deals with larger quantities of prints. So I ordered the package deal for 9 prints.
Once I got to the Printerpix site I was able to upload my photos which I had already resized to a 1x1 ratio. I don't like letting these sites to the resizing as they have every motivation to sacrifice image size and compression. Once the files were uploaded I was taken to a page to check out. My Groupon code worked but what didn't get included was the insane shipping and handling fee. Shipping and handling came out to $66.28. But I was already $35 into this and so I paid for the shipping and handling thinking that somehow it must be reasonable because metal prints are fragile and perhaps they'd be fabricating some sort of holder for my prints so that they'd be secure.
Then I waited for over a month for my photos to arrive. I was sent an estimate for a week and a half to delivery yet it took just over a month before I received a shipping confirmation. Then another week for my prints to arrive. And when those prints arrived, woah momma that's not what I was expecting.
Finally the package arrives and it's tiny, it actually measures 10x10 inches with a ruler. The box is made of paper thin cardboard.
one corner of the box is creased in. The box is extremely light and I'm not upset yet. I just want to see my pictures finally.
Remember that 9 sheets of aluminum had to fit inside this.
Upon opening the box I'm greeted with 9 pieces of alumium stuck together thanks to cling wrap that is taped over all of them. Really smart, let's put adhesive against a photo print and hope nothing bad happens. (It left residue in several places.) Every single panel is crushed on one corner in several different directions.
I did my best to curl the alumium back but it's clear even before the plastic is off that these photos are destroyed. I can't sell these, I can't share these professionally.
But then that's not the only problem I see. Another huge problem i have is that I paid over $60 for the "Shipping and Handling" of what couldn't have cost them $10 to ship and $2 to package. This is where the real ripoff begins. I paid high price expecting quality yet I got a shipping experience that would have gotten disputed on Ebay or Amazon, or really any other company. In fact, no reputable company would have pulled something like this. They would have used corner protection.
If you look at how razor thin this material is, knowing that it's similar in thickness to an Aluminum can, you'd be reasonable to consider making packaging a higher priority. But then again you're probably not a scammer and a reasonable person.
I tried several techniques to flatten these panels without scratching them. None have worked. This is the best I can do.
Trying to get a return proved impossible.
So once I knew my product received was damaged and unable to be fixed I knew that I'd need to get in contact with the company and get a replacement printed up or a refund. I'd prefer getting a fresh batch of prints though.
I first contacted this company using their phone number. After an hour of crappy music I heard someone pick up the phone and set it back down. I called back the next day and the same thing happened after 20 minutes. So I did what any reasonable person would do. I used the "Contact us" chat box on the website. After a few minutes someone gets in contact with me. I send them pictures through the chat box and tell them of the damage. The person says that they can't view photos (Then why have the ability up upload them?) in the chat software and that I needed to Email printerpix. So I did, twice, on two different days.
The last message I sent got a an automated reply message on 9/16. It's now 9/29 and I still have not received any emails from this company. (Besides the daily spam about $4.99 photo deals)
And that's where that leaves us. I have according to their invoice $785.83 worth of damaged product that is useless to me. I have exhausted all forms of communication with them. I disputed the charges with the credit card company and the representative from the credit card company said that they couldn't get a hold of Printerpix either.
In retrospect.
In retrospect I should have read the reviews of this company. There are so many red flags and horror stories from other people.
The Better Business Bureau has this to say about Printerpix.
Pattern of Complaints:
BBB files indicate that this business has a pattern of complaints concerning consumers not receiving the ordered items within the indicated delivery window and items that are received are being reported as damaged. Consumers allege that they have difficulty communicating with the company and difficulty in receiving refunds for the damaged or undelivered products.
That's a huge red flag.
Another red flag were the hundreds of reviews like this on sites such as Sitejabber where people were complaining of the same problems with customer service being nonexistent that I was.
After such a huge ripoff I feel as it's our duty here at Magnaimages to warn others that might search Google for references to this company of what they are getting into. If the company ever decides to start making things right with us I'll post the results here but the thing is, the damage is already done. I don't trust this company. I don't think other people should trust this company. If the company responds it will only be because of the bad press they receive and an attempt to get this post removed from the internet. The problem is, their treatment of us as customers was so poor, our experience so bad, our losses on this in wasted time and energy going through the refund process that even if they decided to reprint our photos it means basically nothing. I needed those photos within a week of the delivery date, I didn't get them. S#$% happens, but when the product finally arrives to mangled, and the process of dealing with it ends in me hitting brick walls with this company over and over, it's not me. There's a problem with this company and how they conduct business. Definitely buyer beware.