I need pictures by Friday.

NorthernBuck · May 18, 2009

When is the latest I could realistically order and expect to have pictures delivered by Friday using next day air? Its midnight on Monday/Tuesday and I just got a large order for a kids graduation party. I have to be up at 5:30 for my day job and its too late to mess with this any more. I'm hoping I wake up tomorrow and check this thread and find out I can still order tomorrow and will have them by Friday.

Andy · May 19, 2009

Order ASAP on Tuesday. Email our heroes, ATTN: Anne, and we'll make sure the order gets done fast in the lab. Normally in the lab it's 1-2 days and then ship. We'll make sure of it, please be sure to email the order number to Anne at our help desk. Thanks!

NorthernBuck · May 19, 2009

This order has been placed. I sent an e-mail with the order #. I appreciate the help!

kdgrapes · May 19, 2009

NorthernBuck wrote:

This order has been placed. I sent an e-mail with the order #. I appreciate the help!

I'm sure they'll come through! I ordered 600+ prints on a Sunday night and received the order Wednesday. SmugMug and BayPhoto were amazing with what they did for me.

mweber · May 20, 2009

kdgrapes wrote:

I'm sure they'll come through! I ordered 600+ prints on a Sunday night and received the order Wednesday. SmugMug and BayPhoto were amazing with what they did for me.

Wow what am I doing wrong? It took me a WEEK to get 15 8x10's and a few 4x6's shipped via *second day air*. The support staff was....supportive but unable to get the lab to ship via next day after it took them three days to print the 8x10's. Do pro account order's get priority on processing? Do I need to upgrade or just expect to wait a week or two for an order.

On top of that one of the prints was damaged, stuck to the folder. They apologized and are replacing the print but it still didn't help my stress level (ask my kids) when I'm waiting for Fed Ex to deliver the prints at 6:00 when I'm expected at an event with the photos at 5:45.

When I emailed about my deadline and the delay in processing it was mentioned that I should allow more lead time! My thought was if I expected three days to process a dozen or so 8x10's I would have done local processing. It might not have been as good but I would have had much less stress.

Back to the damaged print. I don't know if it was the lab or the delivery. We have had about 8 inches of rain in the last two days. The sky was opening up when the Fed Ex guy left my prints on the front porch. Hmmm, blowing rain cardboard and and photo paper. Not the best combination. I got calibration prints from Bay photo and the were wrapped in a nice plastic sleeve. The EZprints were not. Might be something to consider in the packaging.

Thanks for listening...I feel a little better now...

bandgeekndb · May 20, 2009

mweber, I'm sure it was just a bad set of coincidences that didn't get you what you needed.

I will swear, as will a lot of other users on here about how great Smugmug is about orders, and customer service in general. If you feel it was a real problem, after the fact, email one of the support heroes. If they can't address it, they'll get it to someone who can...ASAP.

Almost a year ago, when I first started trying Smugmug, I was about 3 days away from the end of my trial and whammo, Smugmug went down for almost 24 hours. :cry In and out of read-only, sometimes down completely...it wasn't pretty. Being a bit skeptical, especially for plunking down $150 a year, I wrote to the heroes asking for a bit more time to evaluate. Within MINUTES, I had another month on my trial. Almost every company I try to contact keeps me waiting longer than a few minutes, and with email I was free to do other things!

Now, ask about things like coupons and packages and, well.......

I know they're getting there, but at least they're trying to keep us informed and prepared.

So, if it caused some problems, email those heroes, I guarantee they'll do something to help out. They support everyone equally, aside from the obvious feature differences between price levels. Good luck, and hope your Smuggy days are happier in the future!

Andy · May 20, 2009

mweber wrote:

Might be something to consider in the packaging.

Bay has amazing packaging: http://www.smugmug.com/photos/pro-print-labs-test-results/

AnneMcBean · May 20, 2009

mweber wrote:

Wow what am I doing wrong? It took me a WEEK to get 15 8x10's and a few 4x6's shipped via *second day air*. The support staff was....supportive but unable to get the lab to ship via next day after it took them three days to print the 8x10's. Do pro account order's get priority on processing? Do I need to upgrade or just expect to wait a week or two for an order.

On top of that one of the prints was damaged, stuck to the folder. They apologized and are replacing the print but it still didn't help my stress level (ask my kids) when I'm waiting for Fed Ex to deliver the prints at 6:00 when I'm expected at an event with the photos at 5:45.

When I emailed about my deadline and the delay in processing it was mentioned that I should allow more lead time! My thought was if I expected three days to process a dozen or so 8x10's I would have done local processing. It might not have been as good but I would have had much less stress.

Back to the damaged print. I don't know if it was the lab or the delivery. We have had about 8 inches of rain in the last two days. The sky was opening up when the Fed Ex guy left my prints on the front porch. Hmmm, blowing rain cardboard and and photo paper. Not the best combination. I got calibration prints from Bay photo and the were wrapped in a nice plastic sleeve. The EZprints were not. Might be something to consider in the packaging.

Thanks for listening...I feel a little better now...

Ouch! I'm sorry for the trouble. This certainly isn't typical. Can you give me an order #? I'd be happy to look into this.

-Anne
SmugMug Support Hero

mweber · May 20, 2009

AnneMcBean wrote:

Ouch! I'm sorry for the trouble. This certainly isn't typical. Can you give me an order #? I'd be happy to look into this.

-Anne
SmugMug Support Hero

I've traded several emails with the support folks on this one and like I said, they were supportive (seriously) and very responsive. I don't have a thing bad to say about the support except the one comment about lead time rubbed me the wrong way.

The issue came down to being on a timeline without a lot of margin for error and every step of the way things just didn't seem to go right. The order at EZ prints took three days, I was expecting 1-2. I asked for an upgrade to overnight but something went wrong with the upgrade request (possibly too late) so it still went out second day. Also, the ship notification email was never recieved.

Finally, Fed Ex was at the outer window of the delivery time. This caused me to run back home to get the package in a rain of biblical preportions. I checked and I was wrong. We got 8 inches of rain in the last 24 hours!!! Our jaws dropped when a Fed Ex truck drove by at 5 without stopping. Then we realized that truck was Fed Ex *Express* and ours was shipped Fed Ex *Home*.

The ship fee was credited without me asking and the replacement print has been ordered. I believe they have done everything I would expect to make it right.

I did get the prints just in time, they looked great and the families loved them. I REALLY wanted to be able to present the team photo montage I created during the end of season party as gift to each of the players. It was so much more gratifying to hear people saying how much they loved it instead of remailing them and not hearing a word.

For your reference it was 991834. It wasn't a large order but it was important to us.

Thanks

Andy · May 20, 2009

mweber wrote:

For your reference it was 991834. It wasn't a large order but it was important to us.

Thanks

Every order is equally important to us!

AnneMcBean · May 20, 2009

mweber wrote:

For your reference it was 991834. It wasn't a large order but it was important to us.

Thanks

Yep, it looks like it went out the morning of the third business day, so it was a day delayed. But, by the time we were able to contact the lab and let them know, it had already shipped and could not be bumped up to Next Business day.

Sorry about that! The vast majority of orders do print in 1-2 business days, but I have to agree about the lead time. If taking an extra business day to process means missing your deadline, I'd recommend stepping up the shipping method as a precaution. In this case, you ordered soon enough that it arrived even though it took an extra day, so things worked out (but just barely!)

-Anne
SmugMug Support Hero

termina3 · May 21, 2009

At the beginning of school two years ago (if you consider this school year to have ended now), a traumatic event occurred that made me order some photos ASAP. I won't go into details because there's no need to be a big downer.

My point is, I ordered photos late on Thursday and needed them on Saturday at the latest. I ordered with the fastest shipping available, but time was working against me in the lab and the shipping would get the photos in my hands at Monday at the earliest (and that's assuming the photos made it out of the lab by 9am Friday).

I emailed the SmugMug help desk, detailing the situation. Within 90 minutes, my order was red-flagged and shipping was upgraded to Priority Overnight. All was done free of charge and at 10pm CST (8 in Cali). (FYI, this was in the pre-Bay Photo days.)

The prints arrived early Saturday (by 8am if I recall), and I was able to personally deliver them to a grieving family.

I make a huge ruckus about coupons and packages on these boards. I don't shy away from what I've said, but there's a reason my personal site will always be hosted by SmugMug.

(The business site, on the other hand, is subject to cold, calculated decisions, and there is little guarantee it'll stay on Smug if coupons fail to appear soon.)

I need pictures by Friday.

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