Small Biz Warning: OvernightPrints.com
OvernightPrints.com is on my you-know-what list! I have no problems shouting out great service & products, but if you’re providing the opposite—believe me, I’m coming for you just as hard!
Here’s the deal: A trusted friend & colleague referred OP to me, to print my new business card design. (She'd had no problems with them the one time she used them, so she wouldn't have known.) Checked out the site, and I was liking what I saw in terms of pricing, services, usability, etc. I modified my card design according to their specs, uploaded it to see a preview (their instructions were pretty user-friendly), and being satisfied, I placed my order for 100 double-sided business cards (the total was $24.61).
That was on Sunday, March 19.
Fast forward to like, nearly three weeks later—still no business cards. After a combination of sometime forgetting they hadn’t arrived and giving them the benefit of the doubt (shipping delays, etc. that could happen), I was finally like, “Hold up—where are my cards?” Usually, a company will email you with a “your product has been shipped” notification, but I'd gotten no such thing from good ol’ Overnight Prints. I pulled up my order on their website, and with the tracking number, found that my business cards—get this—had indeed been delivered on March 31—to an address in Wheeling, Illinois! (Mind you, I’m waay over here in Connecticut.) Signed for by some person I’d never heard of.
Of course, I was heated by then, and initially not sure who dropped the ball—OP, or UPS. After complaining to the UPS representative (I thought it was their fault at first), I got the name of the company at that address. I then Googled the company, found the website & contact info, called & left a message. The next day, I got a call back from a woman there who said she was the one who’d signed for my cards when they arrived. She said that she’d ordered business cards herself from Overnight Prints about two weeks prior—they basically screwed up her order and sent her my cards, instead! After opening the package and seeing my cards instead of hers, she called OP to complain and ask what she should do with my cards. Know what she said they told her? “Oh, you can go ahead and just throw those out—we’ll handle that order from our end.”
Excuse me?
You can’t imagine how livid I was with OP on that. First of all, how do you just instruct someone to just disregard & chuck the order that I’ve been waiting on for nearly three weeks? Furthermore, they didn’t “handle” anything—nobody called me to inform me of what happened. Nope, I had to piece all this together by calling all over the place and getting my “mini-detective” on, lol.
So, that was over the weekend—on Monday morning, I called OP and (of course), all their representatives were “busy” & I was prompted to leave a message, which I did. I then sent them an email stating what had happened, and a demand for a response in 24 hours or less agreeing to either free, immediate, overnight delivery of my cards, or an immediate refund of my money. So far, I’ve gotten no response from them yet. Go figure.
I’ve heard tons of people talk about how they were on hold with OP for up to an hour at a time—oh, I so don’t have time for that! Either way, I’m getting my money back, so although I’m pissed & inconvenienced, I’m not worried. One of the benefits of paying via credit card is that consumers do have recourse through their credit card companies, by filing for a charge dispute if you’ve been wronged. (It works every time, and if a company gets enough complaints, their merchant status can eventually be dropped from the credit card company.) Also, don’t forget to file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau (with which Overnight Prints happens to have an “F” rating).
Well, kids—this experience has reminded me of two things: One, it’s good to check out what people are saying about a company before you do business with them (also by simply Googling the company’s name+complaints)—which is something I admittedly failed to do this time, lol. Secondly, the old saying still rings true—you do get what you pay for!
See other feedback and information about OvernightPrints.com:
Better Business Bureau company report on OvernightPrints.com
on April 21, 2006 on 2:26 am
Thank you for the “link love”, it appears that your comments may have gotten someone’s attention over at Overnight Prints – you might want to check out the latest comment on the post.
on November 30, 2006 on 6:44 pm
Ugh! I’m having problems with this horrible company. I posted a link to your complaint on my page:
http://www.janeconsumer.com/2006/11/30/dont-use-overnightprintscom/
on January 26, 2007 on 7:21 pm
Stay away from overnightprints.com!!!! The greatest scam on the web!!!!
In their preview box my print looked incorrect, I could not figure it out so I emailed them asking what I should do. They said to send the files and they could “convert” it for me, so I sent them the files and paid the money. When I received my prints they looked incorrect, just like the preview. They were not willing to reprint or give my money back. For $70, this is the most expensive fire starting paper ever. Also please do not be fooled by their 100% satisfaction guarantee, simply is not true. The only satisfaction I get is by spreading the word about this company and hoping to cost them triple in what I just handed them. (Just research them yourself, you’ll find out)
on April 29, 2007 on 7:28 pm
Another scary thing about them, is that customer invoices are open to everyone on the web. A violent ex of mine googled me and got my home address from my online invoice at overnightprints.com.
Double beware to use these guys.
on May 16, 2007 on 6:28 pm
Started with business cards. The initial quality was O.K., however, you always loose a few to damage from their packing.
Decided to order letterhead and envelopes, my fist reaction was poor quality so we decided to use the envelopes for internal use only. Once we got down the middle of the box we noticed other companies’ logos were printed the interior (as if they were using scraps). I called and spoke with a Manager named MARKUS, very rude of the bat (and he was address in a courteous manner). It was past the 30-day return policy at this point so MARKUS would not consider or check into having them replaced or exchanged. He actually told me that I should have checked each of the 1,000 envelopes when I received them because that’s what he would have done.
I don’t have time for this ridiculousness!
on June 6, 2007 on 3:12 am
Hi all, I want to add my OvernightPrints.com saga here. The good news is, mine has a happy ending, but it took some work to get to it. This is actually the short version(!):
I ordered my first business cards through Overnight Prints almost a year ago. Two-sided cards with a photographic image on the back, even small type on a black background – the printing was awesome, and I loved the thick card stock. I designed some cards for a friend, again, great quality aside from a lot of mis-cuts, but that’s hard to complain about given the speed and price. Last fall, I ordered a batch of oversize postcards through Overnight – again, really great printing and love the cardstock. No complaints. Three successful orders with no complaints. And all three arrived before the promised date.
Then in April, I ordered another batch of 250 oversize postcards. When they arrived, I noticed they were packed differently than the earlier batch, but didn’t think much about them. I quickly looked through a few and the printing again looked great. A few days later, when putting address labels on, I ran out of cards about halfway through my address list. It turns out I only had about 175 cards. Never having a problem with Overnight prints, I just sent an email asking them what I could do. I never received a response, so a couple days later I called Customer Service. I went through the long wait (while being told I was next in line) and got hung up on. I called again, waited again, and got an agent. I told him the problem and he dismissed the problem by offering a discount on my next order. I said thanks, but I really just wanted the rest of the order I paid for – even just 70 more cards would be fine. He snipped they could only print in batches of 100. So I said 100 would be fine. Clearly annoyed, he put me on hold and finally came back to say fine, they could do that. I asked if I could get an email confirmation, and he said no, but I would get an email when they shipped.
A week later having not heard anything, I called back. I explained the whole situation and he asked who I had talked to. I didn’t know, but it sounded like the same guy. He was short off the bad and told me they couldn’t reprint until they filed a claim with UPS. I explained that the packaging was fine – no damage, and that there was even filler plastic in the box. The box had arrived in perfect condition, it just didn’t have the full order in it. He said it didn’t matter, they had to file with UPS anyway. And even though they would eventually reprint, he wouldn’t do it until an investigation was done. I asked if there was anyone else I could talk to and he said no. I was sure to ask his name this time (James).
At that point I did a google search and found the complaints like on this thread. Through this, I also got the email for Danny Kemp and fired off an email explaining the matter to him and to Customer Service that night. Within an hour I got a snippy email from Customer Service saying that nothing could happen until a UPS investigation occurred. But the next morning, I had a very nice email from Danny apologizing for everything that had happened. He said they would reprint the order and have it to me as fast as possible. When they were supposed to arrive, the UPS tracking showed there was an exception and the box was empty (it seemed to be UPS’s fault according to their tracking). I let Danny know, and he said they would print yet another batch. Those arrived, and as usual, the printing (except for a few natural glitched ones) was perfect.
So… my lesson is, I still prefer their quality of printing and stock over other places I have tried. Their customer service, aside from Danny Kemp, is terrible. (His life has to be hell putting up with all of this, but he was great.) For now, I will still use them as long as I have the luxury of time to deal with a problem, should it happen. I have gone ahead and ordered a new batch of business cards from them today. I’ll report here on the results of those as well.
on June 13, 2007 on 7:26 pm
I am following up as promised on my earlier report (see above). I just received a new batch of business cards from Overnight Prints and they came in on-time and great quality. Like my first batch of cards, these use a photo on the back and have small white type on a black field on the front (not recommended, because printers can often have trouble with the type getting filled in). Despite the bad service experience I had above on my last order, I have to give them kudos for the great job of printing. In full disclosure, there were probably a little over 20 misprints in the batch (of 250). To me, that’s pretty normal with most print jobs, so I don’t have a problem with that, especially at this price. For now, after five orders with them and one bad experience, I’m sticking with Overnight. Their quality of stock and of printing is better than I’ve found for other similar vendors. I just know not to use them on time sensitive orders because if there is a problem, it can take some time to remedy. I do definitely recommend contacting Danny Kemp (marketing@overnightprints.com) if you get the same runaround from Customer Service that I and other posters on this board have had problems with.
on July 31, 2007 on 5:32 am
I’ve used overnightprints.com a number of times and every time i’ve had to deal with customer service I’ve have had a horrible experience and little to no resolution. Crooked cutting on postcards, rounded corners that were diagonally cut and splotchy printing on my last order of postcards and oversized postcards. I was offered %10 off on my next order or a reprint. Unfortunately i half to use their shoddy work becasue I don’t have time to have it reprinted and that makes me look really bad in my promotional efforts. I will never be using overnightprints.com for business cards, printing, overnight, postcards, offset, online design, letterhead, brochures, flyers, letterhead, envelopes, business, card, prints, postcard, design, templates, letterheads, brochure, flyer, flier, envelope, online, overnight prints, laser printing, digital printing, large postcards, headshot printing, color, 4 color again.
on August 20, 2007 on 5:43 pm
HORRIBLE COMPANY!
DO NOT USE OVERNIGHTPRINTS.COM.
on November 30, 2007 on 9:01 pm
I just received some over sized postcards from overnightprints.com and they ALL were damaged! When I called to see what can be done about it, I was put on hold with customer service for 2 hours and then finally some boob tells me he’s going to transfer the call and to another department and to leave a message in a voice mail box and someone will call me back within a week! When I asked for the name of the president of the company, he said he didn’t know. I have an important art exhibition opening in 4 days and he couldn’t care less. DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY!! THEY SUCK AND WILL CAUSE YOU AN IMMEASURABLE AMOUNT OF STRESS.
I just wrote a letter to the Better Business Bureau, Bureau of Consumer Affairs, CNN, ABC News, NBC, CBS and to my local congressman and the senators and congressman in Irvine California where the company in based. I will now devote the better part the next week to try to spread the word about this horrible company with the hopes of putting it out of business for good.
on December 10, 2007 on 5:23 am
just wanted to add my 2 cents – which is 2 cents more than my 1,000 biz cards from Overnightprints.com are worth.
WHY, oh why didn’t I find ANY of these negative reviews on Overnightprints.com when I was FIRST designing my business cards? I ordered a batch of 500 for my start-up way back in April. They showed up and they were gorgeous. I couldn’t believe the quality, especially for the price. Thick cardstock, striking color – everything.
They had a very satisfied customer – until I made the mistake of thinking I could re-order my cards and expect the same level of quality! I put in an order for 1,000 (why not? I love them!) and then they showed up – sliced 1/16″ too short on the sides, cutting off my phone number and part of my website. Oh, that’s the main problem; the cardstock was also inferior, the color looked terrible, half of the cards have bleed marks all over them, the UV coating didn’t look like it was on… should I keep going? my story is the same as everyone elses – first the unanswered emails to customer service, then the lengthy calls on hold, FINALLY getting someone who put me in someone’s voicemail, THEN a back and forth nasty disaster from a “customer retention” specialist who keeps acting like he doesn’t understand what’s wrong with the order (which I’ve explained to them in a 3 page long email document which I have sent no fewer than 3 times AND read to the lady over the phone.) I threatened to file w/the BBB and finally got a polite response from my guy with a suggestion that i “MAY” be able to get a refund. (I MAY?) apparently the ONLY reason you can get a refund from these fools is if your cards were miscut (like mine.) there are no refunds for lousy quality (including the color bleeding AND the fact that they used different cardstock than advertised.) in other words, it’s a Bait and Switch where I got wonderful top quality product the first time and then was handed unusable cards and a month-long runaround headache. I will NEVER use this company and I have been telling EVERYONE to steer clear. I’m suprised to see they’ve risen from an “F” rating with the BBB to a “CCC” – still lousy, but much better than I would have expected, considering the BS they are giving me. I hope they get put out of business SOON.
on December 15, 2007 on 12:15 pm
I am SO~~~~~~~~ with everyone on this! I must agree with Tom that this is the greatest scam.. and I must add “EVER in the history of scams” to the end of that statement.
Here’s my story, I originally ordered postcards (invitations for my client’s event) from printsmadeeasy.com (which I normally loved!) But, after the submission, I realized there was a spacing error. As a designer, I couldn’t let it go. So, I contacted printsmadeeasy.com and asked if I can fix that up.
Well, in the time that they took to answer me, the customer rep. put a hold on my job without letting me know. Which meant I wasn’t going to get my order by the deadline.
So, I cancelled my order from PME and I looked up on google and unfortunately found “overnightprints.com” to make sure that the postcards are delivered on time.
Now that I think about it, how amazing that they normally get the phone when you are inquiring about their service, yet have no customer service… Well, I had the rep tell me that it would arrive in time and that I had a 100% guarantee. So, I ordered my postcards and waited… being super nervous.
The cards showed up and it was worse than I’ve ever seen in my entire life. The cards, wrong size, color on some parts of the postcard some what usable quality and some parts completely off!
I know you cannot expect the same thing as your monitor, but an orange cannot be chocolate brown mixed with avocado. The glossy finish was messed up that it looked like someone spilled milk over it and let it dry or painted a coat of rubber cement. Foggy and hard to even see the image. And I realized that they had resized my image!! So, my outlined text was so small that I could barely read it. Yikes!!
How was I going to explain this to my client?!!
I looked up overnightprints.com with the words “customer service” and found HUNDREDS of complaints that were filled with painful stories of ignorant printer that doesn’t deserve to wreck any more peoples projects or to stay open at all – unless… they are able to go back to each one and make it up some how. Yeah, right.
I found a post that had an email address of Mr. Danny Kemp (marketing@overnightprints.com) with an apology posted by that person from the company. Well, with a few voices mentioning that HE helped them out, I emailed him and the customer service together. Well, I till this day, I have not received one word from them. Is there idea of 100% guarantee the silent treatment?! What is wrong with them?!
Besides the email, I called them numerous times. Well, after many many transfers, I was finally told to hold. Well, I put my phone on speaker phone and waited. I was determined to wait and see what they had to say.
I was “on hold” for an one hour and a half!!!!!!!!!!! then, once I was supposesly connected, they picked up and hung up! Speechless….
What kind of customer service is that? Are they trained at all? F on the BBB? well they don’t even deserve to be on the BBB.
There is no way of contacting them and no way for my ruined rep to my client nor the money I lost. I will make sure each and every one of my colleagues know about their stupidity in business and ignorance that eventually bring down their business selling their dishonest name.
on October 26, 2008 on 1:36 pm
Great post on this company — and they haven’t changed anything since 2006 and their F rating on the BBB. I wished I had read this prior to placing my order because everything about it still holds true. Bad customer service. Bad business practices. 50/50 product. Poor business ethics. They did a terrible job on an order I placed for my business and would not help me through customer service to rectify the problem. After placing a dispute with the Better Business Bureau (where they have handled many complaints on this company) they agreed in writing with the BBB to take care of the problem and provide a full credit. We sent the product back but 2 months later are still waiting on them to keep their word. I have contacted their customer service regarding this multiple times and they are just not responding at all now. This is just fraudulent business practice and for a print job is a lot more trouble than it should be. It isn’t worth it to be jerked around, not receive the product you paid for, and be out the money you put up for an agreed upon result.
on October 29, 2008 on 11:23 am
I should have googled ‘OP complaints’ before placing an order of 100 business cards with them yesterday. This is my first dealing with the company and I already have a sinking feeling that I am about to experience the same ordeal. The number of horror stories seems to confirm the inevitable.
I had switched to OP from VistaPrint after a week of waiting for bizcards that never showed up and which I paid for 2 day delivery. VistaPrint and DHL had jointly lost my package. VistaPrint is very unreliable but they at least picked the phone right away and gave me a full refund. DHL on the other hand was unapologetic. I figured it would be better to have a hassle-free start with another company
So without doing much research, I just clicked the next available link result in Google for ‘Business Cards’, placed my order with the option for 2 day priority.
I was counting on receiving my cards this Friday but just got a cryptic email this morning about a ‘REPRINT DUE TO PRINTING ERROR’ with no details on how this will affect the delivery date. I called to find out and sure enough was treated to 15 minutes(!) of elevator music before a nonchalant rep answered. I was told that barring any additional screw-ups, I will receive them on Monday. We’ll see if that’s the case. I’ll provide an update next week.
Besides writing to BBB, everyone should know that your credit card company can be a powerful ally in dealing with this kind of situation. Just as long as you have the proper documentation (i.e., invoice, photos of damaged cards), you can arrange to have VISA or MASTERCARD cease payment to a vendor who fails to deliver on their services/products.