satisfaction guaranteed

Andy · April 10, 2005

not too many businesses would do this.

wtg baldy and onethumb - you guys stand behind your service 1000%

from the link:

If you are unhappy with your prints or gifts, smugmug will reprint or refund your order, whichever you prefer.

this isn't new news, but i just wanted to point it out and say "thanks."

gus · April 10, 2005

Yep...odd thing is that there seems to be a new genre lining up of late to complain why they are not more like the others

Im with SM for that very reason.

Nikolai · April 10, 2005

wow!
What if the originals are, hmm, not of a supreme quality. Less than perfect. I mean - total crap. I know it never happens to you, Andy:-), but for us mere mortals - you know...:):
Anyway - I'm officially impressed

System · April 10, 2005

I also like the policy that smugmug and other similar sites are using of refunding unsatisfactory print results. When a third party middle man like smugmug is involved between the printer and photographer, I see no other way of doing things professionally.

Happy Shooting.

-don

System · April 10, 2005

Nikolai wrote:

What if the originals are, hmm, not of a supreme quality. Less than perfect. I mean - total crap. I know it never happens to you, Andy:-), but for us mere mortals - you know...:):
Anyway - I'm officially impressed

Smugmug support staff tries saving some of these, like bad color and some stuff, I understand. That is what some of that 15 perecent goes for...I imagine if the sale can not be saved, then smugmug refunds happily.

:

Cheers

-don

Andy · April 10, 2005

minoltaman wrote:

Smugmug support staff tries saving some of these, like bad color and some stuff, I understand. That is what some of that 15 perecent goes for...I imagine if the sale can not be saved, then smugmug refunds happily. :

Cheers

-don

minoltaman,

you haven't a clue as to what you're talking about, do you know that smugmug will refund, or reprint, regardless if it was a pro print sale or a just a grandma ordering a twenty-nine cent print from a child's birthday party.

the "15%" has nothing to do with it.

perhaps with all the negative stuff you have to say about smugmug, maybe this isn't the site for you?

or, better yet, stick around, and let's see some of those photos that have gotten you 8,000,000 page views from your other site.

System · April 10, 2005

andy wrote:

minoltaman,

you haven't a clue as to what you're talking about, do you know that smugmug will refund, or reprint, regardless if it was a pro print sale or a just a grandma ordering a twenty-nine cent print from a child's birthday party.

the "15%" has nothing to do with it.

perhaps with all the negative stuff you have to say about smugmug, maybe this isn't the site for you?

or, better yet, stick around, and let's see some of those photos that have gotten you 8,000,000 page views from your other site

Of course I do, and I think maybe you had better start telling the founder and ceo of smugmug he is full of *rap too it looks like. You don't seem to know what you are talking about on this.

Here is a direct quote from the smugmug founder and ceo just a few days ago:

onethumb wrote:

You might be surprised. Our bread-and-butter is the $100/year service fee, not the 15% commission.
Baldy will never publicly admit to it, so I'll do it for him, but customer service on printing is expensive and time consuming. He spends way too much time on assisting with print orders, Pros who haven't learned how to color correct, reprints, returns, and the like. The 15% goes to pay for all the time and energy related to making sure your customers get great prints. It doesn't chew up the entire 15%, but there's a significant hit.
Don't get me wrong - we love the revenue stream, we love our Pros, we love all the sales they're doing. But the 15% is less cushy than it sounds.
I'll re-iterate for clarity's sake: It'd be very tough to cobrand the shopping cart not so much for technical reasons but for customer service reasons. You don't see all the high-touch, white-glove customer service we do behind-the-scenes, but I assure you it's happening. Your customers interact with our customer service reps often, which keeps them out of your hair.
Further, we have customers who decline payment on print orders fairly regularly. They call their credit card company and complain that they have no idea who "smugmug" is and that they haven't done business with us. (The credit card company won't let us put another name on the bill, such as your studio's name).
We then call them up and remind them of that gorgeous 16x20 print they got of their favorite horse and they fall all over themselves apologizing. If our brand were removed or reduced, the number of times that would happen would skyrocket. I don't think 15% would cover our losses.
Don

Here is the thread: http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=9238&page=4&pp=10

Now I ask you to please stop attacking me and go about your business, Andy. My pictures are everywhere, you can find them if you want to. I don't have any negative stuff to say about smugmug, I have only been answering questions, being helpful, and making a couple of feature requests that others are pushing for too around here. Also, can you please get your facts straight before you attack someone for absolutely no reason.

Thank you and have a good night.

-don

Baldy · April 11, 2005

minoltaman wrote:

Smugmug support staff tries saving some of these, like bad color and some stuff, I understand. That is what some of that 15 perecent goes for...I imagine if the sale can not be saved, then smugmug refunds happily. :

Cheers

-don

Hi Don,

I actually try to look at each print order where the customer complains to see if I can understand why. Fwiw, here's what I usually do:

1. Start with something like "Ouch, I'm sorry your prints came out poorly, but thanks for letting us know about this." We really do appreciate it because 9 of 10 customers never complain — they just never return. I let them know we're happy to replace or refund and that I'll look to see what the issue is. They almost always want a replacement and everyone believes it's a printer calibration issue.

2. I try to figure out what the problem is and 99.9% of the time I can tell instantly. After seeing so many prints, you pick up the pattern.

It's almost always skin tone, but can sometimes be something like colorspace, too dark, washed out, or undersharpened.

3. If it's a print from a pro, I do my best to contact the pro and let them know what the customer said and offer any opinion I can on correction. Most of the time, the pros respond and re-upload images and we replace them. If I can't contact the pro or they need help, I'll correct and replace the prints. If 48 hours pass and I can't contact the pro, I take the liberty of correcting myself and replacing. So far, every pro has been gratified with that. I should make that explicit in our terms, I guess.

We don't charge the pros for the replacements.

I'm working hard on a series of short help sections to address the most common issues.

I hope this helps.

Thanks,
Baldy

System · April 11, 2005

Baldy wrote:

Hi Don,

I actually try to look at each print order where the customer complains to see if I can understand why. Fwiw, here's what I usually do:

1. Start with something like "Ouch, I'm sorry your prints came out poorly, but thanks for letting us know about this." We really do appreciate it because 9 of 10 customers never complain — they just never return. I let them know we're happy to replace or refund and that I'll look to see what the issue is. They almost always want a replacement and everyone believes it's a printer calibration issue.

2. I try to figure out what the problem is and 99.9% of the time I can tell instantly. After seeing so many prints, you pick up the pattern. It's almost always skin tone, but can sometimes be something like colorspace, too dark, washed out, or undersharpened.

3. If it's a print from a pro, I do my best to contact the pro and let them know what the customer said and offer any opinion I can on correction. Most of the time, the pros respond and re-upload images and we replace them. If I can't contact the pro or they need help, I'll correct and replace the prints. If 48 hours pass and I can't contact the pro, I take the liberty of correcting myself and replacing. So far, every pro has been gratified with that. I should make that explicit in our terms, I guess.

We don't charge the pros for the replacements.

I'm working hard on a series of short help sections to address the most common issues.

I hope this helps.

Thanks,
Baldy

Thanks much for taking the time to post that information, Baldy. It is somewhat comforting to know what is going on behind the scenes. Keep up the good work and thanks again.

Take care.

-don

Baldy · April 11, 2005

I missed onethumb's post that I spend too much time on print issues. He's right and I do. There, I'm out of the closet.

rofl

Andy wanted me to go egret shooting with him the other day, but I needed to get some reprints ordered before the lab closed for the day.

:

I believe the root of the problem is that Photoshop books and forum posts get us all focused on resolution, jpeg artifacts, broad color spaces, and oversharpening.

I don't have any record of #1 or 2 being a factor in any returns. Broad color spaces have only hurt, not helped the problem. We've had perhaps a thousand prints returned for sharpening, but always undersharpening. The customer sentiment is usually something like, "I get sharper prints at Walgreen's. You need better printers."

So I think a great online resource will help, along with training a print support person with Rutt skillz. :ps

Baldy · April 11, 2005

Nikolai wrote:

What if the originals are, hmm, not of a supreme quality. Less than perfect. I mean - total crap. I know it never happens to you, Andy:-), but for us mere mortals - you know...:):

Hey Nik,

Surprisingly, we haven't seen many like this. Twice this month I refunded orders the customer wanted replaced and they were pretty upset, but those are the only two that come to mind.

Most people are just so very grateful if you can save their images. One lady had a 480x640 awful, grainy image of her husband on duty in Afghanistan and she desperately wanted an 8x10. Yikes.

It gave me a chance to learn the finer points of Noise Ninja 2. She sent me a note the other day saying she had ordered an additional dozen for extended family and it made my day.

lark · April 11, 2005

minoltaman,
I can't find any of your pictures. I don't know where to look. I do know that I need help in this photography thing and if you've got 8 million of them......just looking at your pictures ought to help me....
Where do I go?

System · April 11, 2005

lark wrote:

minoltaman,
I can't find any of your pictures. I don't know where to look. I do know that I need help in this photography thing and if you've got 8 million of them......just looking at your pictures ought to help me....
Where do I go?

Hi, you can go here. www.illinoisphoto.com. If you like nature you might want to look at these: http://www.pbase.com/minoltaman/raindrops or if you like photoshop and nature you might like some of these: http://www.pbase.com/minoltaman/painting_autumns_colours

I don't know if it will help you any or not though. Fwi, I don't have 8 million pix, i have almost 8,ooo,ooo page views on my pix at that site. About 6,ooo,ooo last year so. Good luck.

Cheers

-don

Nikolai · April 11, 2005

I guess now I know now...

Baldy wrote:

Hey Nik,

Surprisingly, we haven't seen many like this. Twice this month I refunded orders the customer wanted replaced and they were pretty upset, but those are the only two that come to mind.

Most people are just so very grateful if you can save their images. One lady had a 480x640 awful, grainy image of her husband on duty in Afghanistan and she desperately wanted an 8x10. Yikes.

It gave me a chance to learn the finer points of Noise Ninja 2. She sent me a note the other day saying she had ordered an additional dozen for extended family and it made my day.

.. why sometimes it takes you a very long time to reply. Trying to produce a poster print from a nokia shot..:D

Thanks for the answer!

PS
Can somebody (you, don or JT) spend a couple of minutes and fix the links on SM site (news and hacks) to reflect the name/url/picture change for SE,

*please*?

I took me less than 24 hours to change the whole thing including purchasing and rehosting new domain, and I cannot get anybody's attention to change two links for more than a week..
I think this is my third post with this request.
Here's new data, so you don't have to search for previous ones:

Star*Explorer,
http://www.starexplorer.com and

,
which is http://www.starexplorer.com/images/SE_ban25.jpg

(whichever part you deem needed)

Thank you!

Cheers!

lark · April 11, 2005

don

when you can't see someone's face or hear their voice, it's easy to assume someone else's tone for what you read on the net.

I see now that what I was mis-interpreting as a tone of in-your-face-arrogance is actually the voice of a high level of knowledge based confidence .......... :uhoh

these pictures are outstanding!...IMHO. I should be the last one to judge them (as you can see by my gallery www.den.smugmug.com ) I am only learning from you guys.
I thank you for posting them. I will learn from them, so thanks for the help

by the way, any tips advice is quite welcome

Thanks
Den

lark · April 11, 2005

Andy,
man, I'm so rude.

I just clicked back to new posts and realized I COMPLETELY hijacked this thread......

I'm sorry.

Den

Baldy · April 11, 2005

Nikolai wrote:

.. why sometimes it takes you a very long time to reply.

PS
Can somebody (you, don or JT) spend a couple of minutes and fix the links on SM site (news and hacks) to reflect the name/url/picture change for SE

Just to be sure there's no confusion: it doesn't take us long to reply to print order issues.

Your change is queued up on our testing server, but it's in with a number of bug fixes/feature additions that have been in testing the last week.

winnjewett · April 11, 2005

After reading the posts in this thread, I had an idea that might be beneficial to SM.

I wonder if an incentive program for pros would end up saving smugmug money and headache in the long run. I see the program working something like this: All pros start off paying 15% for every print. If they sell some minimum number of prints with a low enough return rate (some reasonable number like 1 in 200 or so), their fee is dropped a certain amount (.1% or so). If they didn't meet the criteria, their fee is raised a little. This evaluation occurs once a month.

I think this sort of program could call attention to the importance of color management and other things that might affect print quality.

Any thoughts?
-w

Nikolai · April 11, 2005

I see..

Baldy wrote:

Just to be sure there's no confusion: it doesn't take us long to reply to print order issues.

Darn.. I wish my issues were more often related to print orders..

Oh well, maybe one day..:):

Baldy wrote:

Your change is queued up on our testing server, but it's in with a number of bug fixes/feature additions that have been in testing the last week.

Ah, ok, thanks for the info. I wish you (or somebody else) told me earlier, I would stop bugging you..

Cheers!

System · April 11, 2005

lark wrote:

don

when you can't see someone's face or hear their voice, it's easy to assume someone else's tone for what you read on the net.

I see now that what I was mis-interpreting as a tone of in-your-face-arrogance is actually the voice of a high level of knowledge based confidence .......... :uhoh

these pictures are outstanding!...IMHO. I should be the last one to judge them (as you can see by my gallery www.den.smugmug.com ) I am only learning from you guys.
I thank you for posting them. I will learn from them, so thanks for the help

by the way, any tips advice is quite welcome

Thanks
Den

Glad to be able help out, Den. The net is a trip, that is for sure. I'm not too good with photography tips but I can say I learned most of what little stuff I know by comparing my images to the best images I could find. I learned some technical stuff at dpr a few years back, but mostly I just grew my photography to a level that I thought could compete with some of the good stuff by looking at the good stuff. I don't use a flash much and love to shoot in natural light. I take a ton of shots and throw most of them out. I don't use an expensive or fancy camera, so in my opinion it's usually not the gear that makes the image. It is the vision of the photographer. When I got serious a couple years ago I thought there was no way I could make images with impact like ones I had been viewing. Then one day a good shot came, then two the next, and then finally I found my rhythm I guess. I also try to make some shots that most people don't shoot. It keeps things fresh and interesting for me.

Sorry that ain't much for advice, but take care and good luck anyway. Oh, and I almost forgot...learn some photoshop tricks and get yourself a couple actions or tools that you use everyday to make life easier. I use some good actions from Fred Miranda and some great software by nik and neat image to help with lighting, shadows, noise and the like. If I did not use photoshop, much of my stuff would be crap. :cry

-don

flyingpylon · April 11, 2005

Well, this thread seems to have gone many different directions in a short amount of time!

I am interested in Smugmug's return policy because (as Nik alluded to) I am not completely confident in my post-processing skills for printing (as opposed to EZ Prints' ability to print my images). I'm almost afraid to allow printing for my images because I would never want a customer to buy a print that looks like crap even if they were happy with it and I was the only one who thought it looked like crap. Then again, the money-grubbing part of me says "who cares!" but that part hasn't won out yet. (I'm sure I need therapy or something to get this all sorted out)

So is this really true... that essentially, at some level, Smugmug will cover for my inadequate post-processing skills by issuing reprints or refunds without cost to me? Even if it's entirely my fault?

If that's really the case, that's great, and quite unexpected. It also makes me think it would be (even more) worthwhile to promote Smugmug's services in conjunction with my site, as opposed to trying to hide the fact that printing is outsourced.

Of course I do realize that uploading crappy images and not trying to improve in the future does hurt me in the long run.

Baldy · April 11, 2005

winnjewett wrote:

After reading the posts in this thread, I had an idea that might be beneficial to SM.

I wonder if an incentive program for pros would end up saving smugmug money and headache in the long run. I see the program working something like this: All pros start off paying 15% for every print. If they sell some minimum number of prints with a low enough return rate (some reasonable number like 1 in 200 or so), their fee is dropped a certain amount (.1% or so). If they didn't meet the criteria, their fee is raised a little. This evaluation occurs once a month.

I think this sort of program could call attention to the importance of color management and other things that might affect print quality.

Any thoughts?
-w

That's an interesting thought, w. I regularly look at the list of top-selling pros and it's amazing how strong the correlation is between top sellers and how few returns they generate (zero, actually, for most of the ones near the top).

Lately, I've been looking at their work trying to determine what it is that keeps them out of trouble. Sometimes, it's as simple as they can afford the 24-70mm L lens that keeps fair-skinned caucasian faces from going as nuclear with on-board flash, which Canon cameras tend to allow.

I think I want to focus first on this resource of short help sections that can save so much grief, and direct them to it when they first sign up.

Baldy · April 11, 2005

flyingpylon wrote:

So is this really true... that essentially, at some level, Smugmug will cover for my inadequate post-processing skills by issuing reprints or refunds without cost to me? Even if it's entirely my fault?

Yes, that's true. We do it all the time. And the photographer has the ability to respond and learn from it.

The only caution is a lot of customers don't complain so you don't know that they're dissatisfied.

DTMPhotos · April 12, 2005

It's kind of funny...From my first portrait shoot, I had a number of customers (3 out of 60) who complained that I had cropped too tight and when framed, it was cutting off parts of their head/feet. Since it was "my bad", I recropped, updated, and then placed the order myself for them. I guess I could have had the customers go through Smugmug and have them replace them under their satisfaction policy...But it was my fault and it seemed a bit unethical to have Smugmug incur cost due to my error. I know it's good customer sat for Smugmug so I can understand why they offer this and I think it gives my customers some comfort that they have multiple routes to go...

Just my 2 cents...

D.

Baldy wrote:

Yes, that's true. We do it all the time. And the photographer has the ability to respond and learn from it.

The only caution is a lot of customers don't complain so you don't know that they're dissatisfied.

Baldy · April 12, 2005

DTMPhotos wrote:

Since it was "my bad", I recropped, updated, and then placed the order myself for them.

Personally, when I shoot I'm bad about this. I crowd the shot a lot and get home and sweat when the customer orders a 8x10 and I can't seem to squeeze the whole group into it.

Many thanks for your integrity. I have had quite a number of pros, who, when I contact them about an issue like this, refuse to let us pay for the reprints. I'm always impressed.

satisfaction guaranteed

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