Worst Experiences in Online Printing and How to Avoid Them

Have you ever tried to print online? Hiring an online printer is a tricky process, and personally I have had some bad experiences among some good ones. If you are hiring an online printer for your own printing tasks, then let me warn you now. There are online printing services out there that can tax your patience and waste your money. So to help you out, I would like to share with you my worst experiences in online printing and how to avoid them.

Lousy customer service – Customer service is the first step in online printing. You contact the printer through email, or sometimes you even need to call to confirm your orders. The first sign of trouble of lousy customer service is when their reply to your email is long (2 days is already long). When calling is needed however, your first warning is if the one you are talking to seems to not know what he or she is doing.

Usually the problem in both situations lies in customer service outsourcing. Some firms leave all the problems of customer support to other firms who really weren't in the industry to begin with. This causes long discussions about what you really want and what the problem is with the service. So when you detect the signs already as outlined above, my advice is to just switch to another online printer. It is not worth your time dealing with firms that do not take care of their customers.

Bad quality prints – Another danger that you should definitely avoid are bad quality prints. I have experiences in online printing where what I saw in their website was not the one I got when they delivered their prints. Since I already paid for the printing, I was left with expensive printouts of something that I couldn't use because of bad quality. To prevent this from happening to you, it is best to look at actual sample prints first. Some printers provide free samples for delivery, while others usually have customer testimonials with pictures of the printed product. Choose the online printers that do this in their sites so that you can at least have a good chance of getting the quality that you want with your prints.

Overcharging of accounts – Overcharging is also a common problem in online printing. I had a nasty experience where I was charged an extra 100 bucks for printing options that I did not choose. It happened because “apparently” some options are set to default and you have to specify to remove certain printing options to save on printing. To prevent this from happening to you, only choose online printers that quickly tally your order options and do breakdowns of all your orders. With sites like that, at least you can easily keep track of what you are spending, and you will pay for only the options that you want.

Late deliveries – Finally, we have the delivery of products. The worst experience you may encounter in terms of delivery is when you need a certain printed order fast and they never arrive on time from the online printer. This can be terrible especially if you had an important deadline for giving out those prints. The best way to ensure getting deliveries promptly is to check how the online printer delivers its packages. If they use professional courier services that have guaranteed delivery times you should be safe. If they use unknown couriers or they have their own delivery services, you better check first if they have guarantees about the delivery and compensation options if they fail in that guarantee.

So there you have it. I hope that saves you a lot of nasty experiences in online printing. As long as you know how to avoid any bad printers out there you should have a great time using the Internet to print all the things you need. Best of luck!