Need to print anything? Well, I highly recommend you avoid UPrinting.com.
They suck.
After screwing up every step of the order process, I asked them to just cancel my order. They didn’t (they hadn’t even printed half of my order when I canceled). At some point you expect these companies to do at least the very minimum to promote customer loyalty. UPrinting.com’s policy must state: keep the customer’s money, no matter much we fuck up.“ Well, fuck them!
UPDATE: I finally received my order. Half of the stickers are crooked. Awesome.
Hang’s Images
Hi Daniel,
My name is David I work for U-Printing. I happened to stumble upon your Blog while browsing the web this weekend. I’m sorry to hear you had a bad experience with our company. I work in the marketing department, where I handle usability of our web site and online ordering process, pretty much making everything easy to use, all of which ultimately boils down to customer experience.
We rarely get complaints so this is a key opportunity for me to identify some of our shortfalls. Could you let me know exactly what happened?
I know this occurred over a month ago and noticed you were refunded the full amount of your unprinted job, but I’m still interested to know where we can improve. This will help us prevent such incidents from re-occurring with any of our customers.
For future reference, I would strongly recommend our Project Review service. This lets you upload your design files to our pre-press department and they send you a press-ready proof (with color bars, crop marks, bleed warnings… the whole nine yards). There’s no upfront payment and we provide the service to prevent potential print errors.
Again, I’m sorry to hear you had a bad experience. I look forward to hearing from you and appreciate your anticipated feedback. Thank you and enjoy the rest of your weekend!
Best Regards,
David
AGREED!! I am literally copying this from the customer above…
“Need to print anything? Well, I highly recommend you avoid UPrinting.com.”
“They suck.”
“At some point you expect these companies to do at least the very minimum to promote customer loyalty. UPrinting.com’s policy must state: keep the customer’s money, no matter much we fuck up.” Well, fuck them!”
I couldn’t have stated more clearer. If I am literally copying and pasting another customer’s comments, that are expressing my sentiments exactly (i would have left out the profanity (lol)), then apparently this is uprinting’s way of doing business….
I’m not getting screwed on the front end.. they decided to screw me on the backend!
REMEMBER TELL A FRIEND! AVOID UPRINTING.COM… HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
“Uprinting has the worst customer service of any online vendor I have ever used. They completely messed up my order and then when I both used their live chat service and called them to send me the correct order, they did not believe my complaint. They made me take pictures of the order with a tape measure to prove they got the order wrong. They said that even if my pictures proved I was right, they would still have to “investigate” to determine “who’s end” screwed up the order. As if I could have taken an inch off the picture myself. I still have not heard back from them and so have resorted to writing online reviews to warn future customers.”
They do suck.
I purchased 500 business cards. The job states Back of card – BLACK I get 500 cards that are white on the back. They refuse to print new cards because I didn’t provide a black file for the back of the card! What??? That’s like ordering a black car and receiving a white one and the dealer saying “Welp! You didn’t provide the paint!” That’s why I selected on the JOB “Black Back”! It’s not like I typed it… It was a selectable choice on their website!
Poor customer service. The funny thing is is that I’m a designer… a successful one at that! And, to be told that by a printer is offensive!
This PROFESSIONAL says “AVOID UPRINTING”!
Hey Dusty,
Sorry to hear about your experience. I’d like to respond to your comment for future reference in any printing you do as a designer. Full Color Front / Black Back, otherwise known as 4/1, is an industry standard term for a prints that will be run with 4 inks (CMYK) on front, and 1 ink (black) on back. Offset printing is based on color seperation, meaning that your graphics will be broken down into Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. These seperations are then used to create film “plates”, which are set on the press and indicate how much of each color will be applied on a blank sheet of paper. This four color process printing results in very high quality prints at an affordable cost when run in volume. That same process is used in most everyday catalogs and direct mail pieces, business cards and so forth.
When you’re printing 4/1, this means you we use 4 plates on the front, and only 1 for the back. However, the same principle applies. The film plate is created using the graphics on your files. So, if a file is empty in the back, the film will interpret it as a blank area. To achieve a full black coverage, you do have to have a full black area in your files.
That being said, the black car analogy is a bit misguided, but understandable. We do have a policy of full refunds for misprints and mistakes in our part. In the future, I would strongly recommend (as I did on my first response) that you use our free file review service. This way you will see an electronic proof file with the exact graphics that will be sent to the press.
Again I do apologize for your bad experience and I hope you can consider us in the future. We are very active with the design community and have strong relationships with designers. Coming from a design background ourselves, we’ve built our company with a focus on very personal customer service, high quality and low cost. Additionally, we offer trade discounts to designers who resell to their clients.
If you’d like, I would be more than glad to print your 500 business cards (with your new files) and ship them to you for free. I simply want you to experience the service that thousands of client’s enjoy with us. Feel free to email me at david [at] uprinting.com or call me at 888-888-4211. I’ll personally take care of you.
Dusty,
If you are a successful designer, you should know what 4/1 means. The fact that you don’t shows the lack of basic print knowledge designers have today. What would have happened if you chose Color for the back? They would just randomly assign a color to the back of your card? I can’t speak for Uprinting because I have not used them yet, and I am trying to find out more about them before I order, but they definitely are not at fault in your case, to the point of me needing to register here and say that.
wow…how much anger does no2uprinting / nemetzca / Dusty have?
I have used uprinting for printing business cards and they supply awesome quality cards.
To me it appears that no2uprinting, et al. are jealous of Uprinting.com’s success and trying to spread bad word about them.
I’ve used Uprinting a couple of times…they do tend to make mistakes, but if you are patient and are willing to work it out, they will make things right – and the quality can’t be beat for the price…. So now, when I use them, I make sure first and foremost that I’m not in a rush (so plan ahead). Their customer service has always been very responsive… Prices are great, and quality has always been very good, so I’m willing to hit a couple bumps in the road because, down the road, when I’m into my 500th business card of the 1000’s…I no longer remember that I received my order 3 or 4 days “late”…all I know is that my cards are lovely and I saved money. And I will use them again!
I CANNOT recommend Uprinting. They botched my job and did not make good. Very poor customer service and they were quite rude.
As with all printers things just don’t always go the way we would like it. At Hollywood Studios we pride ourselves on providing quality gang run printing, as one of our services, with full customer support. We pre-flight every job before we print it to make sure you get what you expect and are paying for. Most of all…we stand behind our work. You may view our prices at… http://www.hollywoodstudiosonline.com/Qstore We specialize in 100lb gloss book, 100lb gloss cover, 14pt and 16pt. Aqueous, UV, and Matte finishes are standard along with Spot UV. We provide easy to use templates to ensure your folds or scores are where you want them. With over 27 years experience, we know how important every job is.
UPrinting is horrendous. A print shop’s reliability and honesty is far more important than even it’s print quality or technical expertise. Having a poor quality print is far better than having no print at all. When I found Uprinting online, I read through extensive reviews from other designers before placing an order to print several artworks for an upcoming show I had. Everything seemed to check out, they had a decent sized designer following, and the prices were reasonable enough for me to consider them over local print shops.
I placed an order on Monday 10/13/08 for four large 20×30 prints, a set of business cards, as well as post cards. Knowing full well that shipping was an additional variable, I had back up plans in case something were to go wrong before Friday. I spoke with Timothy Torres from Uprinting on Monday 10/13, I made it absolutely clear that I needed the prints before Friday afternoon on 10/17/08, and I was willing to pay for next day air. He assured me everything will be shipped out by Wednesday morning and that I would receive it on Friday morning. They sent me an invoice for the prints as well as for 2nd day air, which I immediately paid. I called on Thursday again and spoke to Karla to check on the status of the shipment, Karla said that everything was shipped in one package and that it was on schedule to arrive by Friday morning. I asked her for the tracking number so I can see the status for myself after work.
Later when I checked the tracking online, I was livid to find that the package was actually shipped UPS Ground and that it wasn’t set to arrive until next Tuesday, a full 4 days later than as was scheduled, the prints are completely useless to me by then, as the opening would be over. I called UPS and they confirmed that it was shipped out Thursday night when they had earlier lied about it being on Wednesday morning. I finally got through to Tim on Friday morning, he sounded confused and eventually hung up muttering excuses about having to speak to the shipping department before he can give me any details. After waiting more than 3 hours, I left a voice mail for Tim demanding answers, Tim finally called back an hour later to admit that they made a big mistake. He explained that somehow my order was split into two separate packages, one package with the cards was shipped 2nd day air, while the prints were inexplicably shipped Ground a day late. I don’t understand how they could make a mistake of this magnitude, this is something that not even the worst print shops I’ve used were capable of doing. Poor quality and delays are one thing, but to lie to your customer and keep them thinking everything is fine until the very last second is absolutely unforgivable. This is something that can ruin gallery openings and damage someone’s reputation and career. I was left with no choice but to go to the only print shop I knew in NYC that had a 5 hour turn around time. They managed to print everything in 3 hours but charged me $780 for the 4 large prints, something that usually costs $300-400 if I had even one more day to work with. All Tim could offer me for my troubles was to fill out a form asking for a refund of the prints, he didn’t even offer to refund the 2nd day air or the now useless business cards and postcards. I asked to speak to a manager and he said that one will not be in for another hour but he’d have her call me. The phone call never came and when I finally grabbed hold of said manager, she claimed that she never got word of this. I can’t believe how quickly they pulled a 180 as soon as the jig was up. Avoiding an unsatisfied customer is not going to solve anything, and offering me a refund for prints that were due to arrive in 2 hours does absolutely NOTHING for me. They simply just don’t get it as a company. Print shops need to be responsible for the job they do and don’t do.
I understand there will be some of you who must think I’m insane for going to an online print shop for an important exhibition. The fact is if you’re an aspiring artist just out of college up to your neck in student loans, you have to make due with the resources you have. I won’t do it ever again but it has worked out for me up to this point. I highly doubt Uprinting will ever fully compensate me for the $780 or the time I had to take off from my job to get the rush order in. At this point it’s just important for me to document my experience so other artists and designers do not get shafted.
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For those of you wondering, the print quality is below average, but not the worst I’ve come across. The 2″ x 2″ business cards were decent, nothing crooked. A few cards had deep imprints from the printer’s clamps but that’s to be expected, the text was fuzzy but still legible. The 4″ x 6″ post cards on the other hand was dismal, I had given them 350dpi files, the print quality was fuzzy and the surface of the semi gloss was inconsistent and blotchy. I’ve yet to receive the posters but if it’s anything like the post cards, I might actually be glad that I was forced to go to the local print shop who had much better quality prints for my exhibition.
I have to agree with Dusty. If the drop down option includes BLACK as the option for the back then the printer should print it black. The only reason to have the option is for convienence of the customer. So they DON”T HAVE to include a solid black file. (Most printers only offer this if they are using paper that is pre-printed with Black on the back.)
If you are going to require a file for the back, then you should not list it as an option.
As far as the printer goes, since the printing is 4/1 if the printer gets a blank plate, they should assume that there is a problem. I worked in a printing press and if you start printing and the back is white AND you just put a plate on you HAVE TO KNOW that something is wrong. If it was a white background it would be 4/0. This was a mistake of the printer. The order sheet would have said Black Back, the lack of anything on the K plate (Black Plate) should have tipped them off. The fact that they blamed the customer is a just bad customer service. (Remember the days when the customer was always right?)
Having said that, I will say I have used Uprint for several jobs and though they were a little slow, the printing was dead on. Just make sure you get a proof and check it CLOSELY.
Agreed, terrible customer service.
Pray that everything goes smoothly, because if they mess up, good luck getting them to fix or even acknowledge the problem. They will spend days (on day 7 now) “investigating” the problem. All the while sending rude emails while you and your client wait in limbo…
Do your homework and find a better printer. This place is not worth the hassle or headaches.
OH MY F—ING GOD!
I am writing this comment while sitting on hold with u-printing. I’ve been on hold for 23 minutes. I called to check the status of my order. This has been the worst experience for me with any vendor. Ever. Not worth any amount.
I will complain to BBB next. I recommend you all do the same.
NOT WORTH IT! TRUST ME!
Seriously?
If the drop down menu for ink color says black, it should be printed all black? Then what the hell does the color option mean?
The two options are for 4/1, so BLACK ink, or 4/4 for full color. They use black I am guessing instead of 4/1 because they will only print black for one color. Not supplying your printer with a file of what you want is plain stupid. The options need to be there so they know to print in full color or single color. No one wants to get charged for 4/4 if they have a one color back.
I agree a blank plate should throw some flags but since they didn’t have a file, the plate never may have been made. If you are dumb enough to do that then you deserve it, and deserve to pay for it too.
It’s just annoying to see people feel entitled to something when it’s their own fault.
I just hung up with them and they DO suck! They missed my delivery date after they initially promised me it would be here today (Friday). I had called on Monday to check to make sure it would be here on time, when they told me that it wouldn’t make it by regular delivery (even though they originally told me it would) I agreed to pay an additional charge for 2 day air to ensure it would be here Friday. I checked my UPS tracking number Friday morning and saw it wouldn’t be arriving til Monday. Well I need it for a show Sunday. The lame customer service rep said she would escalate the issue but that the person (June) who would take care of it was out to lunch. I called back forty minutes later and she was there but hadn’t bothered calling back. All she offered was for me to reject the shipment and I wouldn’t get billed.As I read these posts, I am not sure I believe that. No offer of something off the job, or something off the next job, she seemed like she couldn’t care less. Absolutely HORRIBLE customer service. I will be contacting my credit card company about this issue. And needless to say, I will never use them again.
Here is my Uprint story:
So I ordered some business cards from Uprint at what I thought was a reasonable and fair price. I was happy with the proof and was excited about my purchase.
About a week after I approved my proofs, one of their “Customer Service Reps(really a sales man masquerading as a service rep)” called me and this was the conversation:
Me: Hello
Scummy Sales Man: “Hello, this is XXXXXX from Uprint”
Me: How can I help you?
Scummy Sales Man: It turns out that we wont be able to process your order until the last possible day of your original quote.
Me: That sucks. Why?
Scummy Sales Man: It seems we are verrrrrrrrrry busy right now so your order wont be printed till the end of the year and then it will probably take about ten days to ship out, so you should have it by the middle of January.
Me: WTF? So you are telling that it is a 30 day turnaround for your product?
Scummy Sales Man: That’s just how busy we are sir. Now if you upgrade your shipping to one of our other packages we can guarantee that you will have your cards by the end of the year. In fact, we can have them to you on Monday if you go for our overnight shipping.
Me: That completely contradicts what you just told me. You said that you can’t print my cards until the end of the year. Now you are telling me that if I cough up more cash, you will take care of me. That is pretty scummy.
Yes you read that right. These bastards tried to call me up and up sell me on the shipping & handling once I had already placed the order in order to make more money off of me. I told the guy very politely that I was not interested. The nerve of these people.
It came. My job came. If they hadn’t tried to scam some more cash out of me, I would love this place. 1000 multicolored high gloss business cards for $26 or 2.6 cents a card. The cards look beautiful, everything is lined up perfectly. It is unfortunate that I must now shun this place forever because of there slimy customer service(*cough*sales) people.
I was going to the UPrinting web site and I saw this site pop up 2nd on the search results hierarchy. Though there is no way for readers to verify, I will say I am a not affiliated with UPrinting except as a customer. I have placed several orders with them over the past 18 months. I also have used other “online” printing services Modern Postcard, for example) as well as, traditional printers in my local area and in other states.
My experiences have generally been good with UPrinting. I have ordered postcards, “club” cards, etc. They have been delivered and shipped as promised. Some of the more complex cards we have put together have come out great. But preparing your materials properly is key. If you do not know how to prepare your documents for print, or have someone who does not know, then your results will be poor.
Even though all these online print services will assemble and proof, they will not be re-engineering your content if it is bad.
I have spent far more money with local printers on certain projects and the results have come back wrong (like having a thousand folded notecards come back with an uneven fold, so they wouldn’t fit in the envelopes). Not a “print” problem, per se. So it can happen with anyone you use to print materials, even when you see a proof in person. And having a 4-color process print come back misaligned. And even having a black business card come back printed properly, but with enough of a roller relic down the middle to make it noticeable. And irritating to me. And those projects were with a high dollar offset printer.
So in short, UPrinting has been a good resource for me. Quality has been good, pricing is pretty good and delivery has been as expected.
Recommend you try
http://www.psprint.com
Better Printing,. Better Service, Guaranteed
Uprinting has existed as a cheap knock off of these guys for years.
I’m so glad I found this blog, even if only to commiserate. I’m in the middle of a job right now. All the same problems as previous users. I was convinced that they were a completely off shore op in India posing as a U.S. based company. It’s really difficult trying to discuss pre-press issues as the personnel have VERY limited English. They just keep saying ‘yes, maam’ When I asked the question “where are YOU personally, physically located?” they were evasive and not willing to discuss it. I went through 3 people until I got to a very nice woman who did in fact tell me that all personnel is based in Santa Monica. I’m not a designer – I just need a few postcards printed, and it shouldn’t be this difficult. If you do use them, hawk them with phone calls every step of the way until you get someone you trust. I’m moving on. Life is too short.
Interesting. Couldn’t sleep and was researching the competition (I also run an online printing service – but I won’t add a link, not here to spam). As a printing professional I had to address the gentleman who was upset about not getting a solid black back when he opted for 4/1. Yes, 4/1 means full color on the front and black on the back – but it typically applies to some kind of text or design printed on the back – therefore if you choose 4/1 it is expected that you will provide artwork for the black back side. HOWEVER, that being said, if I get an order that specifies 4/1 but there’s no artwork for the back, of course I’m going to contact the customer to ask them what they wanted. That seems like a no brainer to me! I don’t mean to be critical of Uprint – can’t say I’ve used their services so I have no room to speak, but I was surprised to read that they just printed it 4/0 when the customer specified 4/1. Yes, it does seem the art of customer service is a lost art. I’m proud to say though that some of us still recognize and emphasize its value. PS – Uprint does have good pricing, but on most items one can do better. (hint)
I have just had my first experience with uPrinting. After being in close contact with them on the phone and via email, they still seemed to be able to screw up my order. I ordered two custom sized prints, folded, and a quantity of 500 each. I received my UPS tracking and there were two boxes being sent, both with different weights. I thought that was a strange way to split an order of two different designs and felt there was something fishy brewing.
Sure enough the packages arrived and inside one box was the 500 I order and the other was only 250. On top of the count mishap I discover that they failed to fold any of my prints. I immediately get on the phone to resolve the problem and end up talking to a manger who gave me two options:
1) They will print and ship the missing 250, while I’m at home FOLDING the 750 I already have
2) I can be so kind to send all them back at MY EXPENSE and they will reprint and ship the order.
Two problems here, one, I do not want to spend my days folding the prints, and two, why should I have to pay to send back the order that they f-ed up to begin with? This question I posed to the kind manager and she stated the following “If you go to a store and purchase a cell phone and you get home and realize that it is the wrong model number, then you have to drive back at your expense to return it” — My response, “Well, if I order a pepperoni pizza and PAY someone to deliver it and it turns out to be a salami pizza, I should NOT have to pay the driver to take it back and get me my pepperoni”.
Uprinting should just bite the cost of their mistake and not burden me finacially for having to return something that they f-ed up. I better gas up the car before I head to the post office to send my order back.
Their customer service is a stubborn S.O.B
Quick follow up. Uprinting has rectified my order all at their expense.
I had a great experience with UPrinting! I normally am quite compulsive, demanding, and critical of online ordering, and so I was interested to see this site and the advice to “avoid Uprinting.” Of course, I didn’t see the site until after I already had placed my order, so I figured I had made a terrible mistake and that my poster would be ruined. However, Uprinting was great in every possible way. They even called me on the telephone to discuss my order and to point out that the logos I had planned to use would look rather grainy when blown up to poster size. I ended submitting my order for their free pre-press review three separate times, and they only charged me an extra $5 for all the time their staff must have put into preparing and checking my order three separate times. They replied carefully and accurately to my queries, and my poster arrived exactly three days after I approved the sample copy online. It was packed very carefully and cushioned well so as to avoid any possible mishaps. Best of all, the price was by far the lowest that I found, saving 40% off the cost Kinkos wanted to charge. I could not be happier.
I have taken the time to provide this feedback only because my experience has been so different from those of some of the people on this web page. I can’t speak for others, but I would use Uprinting again in a heartbeat.
Thanks for listening to my story.
I have had no problems with print quality so far. But OMG their customer service is a joke.
I ordered a set of business cards from them to test them out before trusting them with a big job. The business cards were fine, with the turnaround as promised.
Having sent two large, multi-page jobs to them, I have been horribly disappointed both times. Neither job came in on time. These things happen and you can plan for it, but you could at least TELL ME it’s going to be late.
Just keeping your customers informed about the status of an order would go a long way. But that’s just too much to ask from them.
The day before my latest job was due, I called to find out what time the job might be ready. (I still can’t tell if their customer service is in an off-shore call center or not because no one at the shop seems too bright or able to communicate, either.)
Anyway, the sub-Bangalore quality customer support just said, “Yes, yes. It will be shipped out tomorrow.”
That’s great, except it is for pick up. “Yes, yes. Come by tomorrow. Come by after 6pm and it will be ready. You can pick it up.”
OK. Is there someone I can speak to so I can MAKE SURE it’s ready before I drive down there. Last time, it wasn’t ready. “Yes, yes. Call back tomorrow.”
OK. How late is the shop open? “Yes, yes. It will be ready tomorrow. Eight day turnaround.”
Right. How late is the shop open? “You can come by between 6 and 7pm.”
Called the day it was due. Waited over an hour for a call back to make sure my order is ready. I called them back. “It will be done between 6 and 7pm.”
ARE YOU SURE? I WANT SOMEONE TO BE POSITIVE IT’S DONE BEFORE I DRIVE ALL THE WAY DOWN THERE BECAUSE LAST TIME, IT WASN’T READY.
“OK. Hold on. Yes, it’s ready for pick up right now. It’s done.”
Durrrrrrrrrrrrr.
I might use them again for business cards, but for any big jobs, I’m done with uprinting. They treat their customers like crap.
If they’re willing to charge you an extra 10% or so a day to get your order faster, shouldn’t we get 10% off for every day it’s late?
I like how they spend so much time trying to soothe complaints here, on yelp and twitter. Way to close the barn door after the horse already got out. Maybe if you spent some more time on customer service up front, you wouldn’t have to do so much damage control after the sale.
Wow, I wish I had read this blog first, before going to these guys, because they screwed me over too.
My story:
I ordered a canvas print (20×30″) for about $60 and when it came it looked extremely dark and muddy. I called and asked them to make it right and they got back to me a day later in an email saying that after “reviewing” my case they determined that my print was good. Believe me, it’s not even close to being an accurate print!
To make matters worse, instead of trying to make it right they just offered me a 20% discount to have the image printed again! Are you kidding me? So much for customer satisfaction.
I tried to talk them into making things right and they flat out ignored me after that. It’s a bummer I lost the money, but I can only hope that the next guy will be smarter than me and do some research before soliciting these shiesters.
Well, in New York there is 1-800-PRINTING. They specialize in Full Color Printing, UV Printing and Rush Service. I LOVE THEM…
http://www.800printingnyc.com or http://www.nycprintdirect.com
Found there website… prices looked good… I have a very large order for $5,000 in business cards… I called and asked for some samples – they said “No” ?!? And the girl sounded Indian – so I said no problem – bye. I called back and somebody else answered – another Indian – I asked him if he actually worked at the printer – he hesitated and then said yes… I told him I wanted to speak with somebody in Sales – he said okay… I wanted a few mins and a voice mail picks up – another Indian voice … They all sounded pretty clueless… the girl told me if I place an order I’d get a “proof”… that would have to suffice as my “sample”.
My suspiscions aroused, I searched Google and found this blog…
WOAH!!! They sure AIN’T GETTING MY BUSINESS!!!!!!!!!!
I just received my business cards. I ordered them late last Thursday, 1/28 (5:45PM) – $27.88 for 500 2 x 3.5 gloss 4-color – and paid for 2-day shipping (another $11.59, a fair charge). I used one of their templates and added my logo and my text. I changed the back to black. The proof looked good (front and back) and it was cheap enough, so I placed the order. Although they didn’t ship until Wednesday, 2/3, they did ship them 2-day UPS. So after 6 business days, I finally have them.
Perhaps custom work isn’t handled so well, I don’t know, but my order was all done via the web interface. The one query I had, regarding an ETA, was sent Monday evening about 9:30, and was responded to at 4:43 the next morning (!). They told me the cards would ship Wednesday, and I ‘d receive them on Friday. And that’s exactly what happened.
The cards are beautiful, and the backs are black. No problems at all, other than the slight delay. A very good product for a very good price. If I did it myself, the Avery business cards alone would cost more, and it wouldn’t come out this good.
Highly recommended – at least for business cards using one of their templates.