Lack of UK / European Lab

Clootie

After doing much reading I have to write to say how sorry I am that Smugmug do not and does not seem to have in the planning a UK or European Printing Lab to support members outside the USA.

You have everything I'm looking for except this one major feature.

I'm currently with Zenfolio and they have far fewer features, although custom themes and CSS editing is on the way, so at least that will come close to what Smugmug offers. There also within 1-2 months suppose to be rolling out a UK/European Lab. But even with those two feature, will they then match Smugmug, not sure, but a UK/European lab is a must.

Out of interest, I take it there are UK members using the Smugmug service, how are you finding using a USA Lab and the shipping?

Regards.
Dave

Andy

Hi Clootie, welcome! We'll ship to your UK customers from our Labs here. And customers are doing that right now, we ship lots overseas.

A local lab may be in the cards one day in the future but we're not focusing on that right now, short term, I'm very, very sorry.

caroline

Hi Dave,
I'm in the UK and have tested out the service, though it was before Bay came into the picture. The quality was excellent and delivery time from order to doorstep was I think 11 days which I found acceptable, the packaging was good even at that time. I don't currently offer prints for sale direct from my site but have sold a small number in the past. The problem is then that with only a modest amount of money due to me it would cost more to process a cheque from Smug than is worthwhile, however I believe alternative arrangements are being made by Smug. I would always choose SmugMug over any other service despite some minor dissatisfaction at times :-)

Caroline

Clootie wrote:

Out of interest, I take it there are UK members using the Smugmug service, how are you finding using a USA Lab and the shipping?

Regards.
Dave

paulbrock

Hi Dave,

I've decided not to offer prints directly through SM for the following reasons

1) Payment to you is made by cheque in US dollars - this costs around £15 per cheque to process and a couple of weeks to clear.

2) Prices to customers can only be displayed in US dollars, not UK pounds. I don't think the system accepts Maestro cards either.

3) Shipping costs from overseas are expensive for small orders, and times are also longer.

(I've not re-evaluated it for a while so if any of these have changed recently please let me know!)

I should also point out that people have regularly requested these features for several years now and unfortunately they're not a high priority.

As an alternative I setup a paypal checkout system - bit fiddly at first but there are guides in the customisation section. This means I fulfil customer orders at home, which is more work for me, but I feel it gives a better impression to my customers.

Apart from that though, SM is brill

Chris H

I've set up an account with Photobox in the UK and created a shopping link to identical galleries there. They print and post within a day, all the prices are stirling and the quality is excellent.

It also has the added advantage that you have more web presence.

I thought about the paypal route, but don't want to be bogged down with printing orders and delivery. This way it's still automated and fairly seemless.

Chris