Ordering Prints: A Tedious Process

amc

I just successfully finished my 4th attempt to order 135 4x6 photos from a recent trip to Alaska. Is it just me, or is the process unusually time- consuming? After each step, I had to wait several minutes for the album to reload (or whatever was happening), including additional time after the point where the order had been successfully completed. And deleting a few prints from the album took a while too. And this is with 5+ mbs cable. I really feel sorry for anyone with dialup, or those who want to crop or make other adjustments online. But I learned my lesson...whatever I upload for printing in the future will be ready to go....no adjustments or deletions.

Drew

Andy

amc wrote:

I just successfully finished my 4th attempt to order 135 4x6 photos from a recent trip to Alaska. Is it just me, or is the process unusually time- consuming? After each step, I had to wait several minutes for the album to reload (or whatever was happening), including additional time after the point where the order had been successfully completed. And deleting a few prints from the album took a while too. And this is with 5+ mbs cable. I really feel sorry for anyone with dialup, or those who want to crop or make other adjustments online. But I learned my lesson...whatever I upload for printing in the future will be ready to go....no adjustments or deletions.

Drew

looks like you tried to do this on a sunday evening - it's the busiest time of the week for smugmug's servers (everyone uploading photos from their weekends...) and so, perhaps the system wasn't as fast as it normally would be.

could you give it a try, say on a wednesday afternoon, and see if you experience the same sort of performance?

thanks

PaulsPictures

amc wrote:

I just successfully finished my 4th attempt to order 135 4x6 photos from a recent trip to Alaska. Is it just me, or is the process unusually time- consuming? After each step, I had to wait several minutes for the album to reload (or whatever was happening), including additional time after the point where the order had been successfully completed. And deleting a few prints from the album took a while too. And this is with 5+ mbs cable. I really feel sorry for anyone with dialup, or those who want to crop or make other adjustments online. But I learned my lesson...whatever I upload for printing in the future will be ready to go....no adjustments or deletions.

Drew

Yes I have the same problem, In fact I also just submitted a Threa with the same problem. I didn't see yours here.

PaulsPictures

andy wrote:

looks like you tried to do this on a sunday evening - it's the busiest time of the week for smugmug's servers (everyone uploading photos from their weekends...) and so, perhaps the system wasn't as fast as it normally would be.

could you give it a try, say on a wednesday afternoon, and see if you experience the same sort of performance?

thanks

I too have this problem, and I have a new different thread about it. And it is not the day or time of day, for me. I have tried a bunch of different days and different times and it ends up being the same very slow problem.

I even emailed "help@smugmug.com" and the answer I received from Anne MacAskill Bean was "I think the slowness you're seeing from our end reflects the complexity of our shopping cart...
I'm sorry I don't have a better answer for you!"

I sure was hoping for a better response. It can't be this slow, it is almost unusable.

Paul Wilson

rfreschner

PaulsPictures wrote:

I even emailed "help@smugmug.com" and the answer I received from Anne MacAskill Bean was "I think the slowness you're seeing from our end reflects the complexity of our shopping cart...
I'm sorry I don't have a better answer for you!"

I sure was hoping for a better response. It can't be this slow, it is almost unusable.

Wow, it pains me to hear this. I'm getting towards the end of my 7 day trial and was definitely leaning towards continuing on with smugmug even though I have mucho time remaining on my pBase account. I've been strapped for time this week and was more concerned with just playing with setting up my gallery and home page to deal with other issues. Perhaps I need to wait some more before making this decision.

PaulsPictures

rfreschner wrote:

Wow, it pains me to hear this. I'm getting towards the end of my 7 day trial and was definitely leaning towards continuing on with smugmug even though I have mucho time remaining on my pBase account. I've been strapped for time this week and was more concerned with just playing with setting up my gallery and home page to deal with other issues. Perhaps I need to wait some more before making this decision.

This problem really only seems to affect purchasing large numbers of prints. For lower amounts of purcahses and for regular web options, I have found you can't beat SmugMug. Everyone loves their viewing options, quick service, great prints and some other advantages. So don't let this scare you off, unless you plan on purchasing hundreds of pictures at a single time on a continual basis.

Paul Wilson

Baldy

PaulsPictures wrote:

This problem really only seems to affect purchasing large numbers of prints. For lower amounts of purcahses and for regular web options, I have found you can't beat SmugMug. Everyone loves their viewing options, quick service, great prints and some other advantages. So don't let this scare you off, unless you plan on purchasing hundreds of pictures at a single time on a continual basis.

Paul Wilson

That's exactly correct. We need to optimize the placing of large orders and we're sorry it took so long. There are two components, one ours and one our print partner's, and they've been working hard on their end towards a solution so hopefully you'll see some speed gains soon.

Thanks,
Chris

rfreschner

PaulsPictures wrote:

This problem really only seems to affect purchasing large numbers of prints.

Thanks for the clarification. I did see one post where the user was only ordering 40 prints, but they were also changing the format so who knows.... But, for most of the folks that I know, that won't be an issue.