2M Print

Purchased a couple of vouchers from Wowcher for this company also calling themselves
. Vouchers were £10 for a 40 page photobook and postage at £5.95 for 5 days delivery. Website states courier delivery is £10.95, when I placed the order for the first photobook using the voucher (and I only opted for a 20 page book as opposed to 40 which is what I could have ordered) the confirmation said delivery would be 9 working days. When I queried this they said I had to send them a copy of the voucher.
Over the next day or so I went back and forth with them and they said they couldn’t honour the voucher and I could pay extra for the 5 days delivery, when I queried how much this would be they said another £15 on top of what I’d already paid, so basically their website has incorrect information and they don’t honour the vouchers from Wowcher. I asked for a refund and now I don’t even have enough time to order the photobook from elsewhere in time for the event it was intended for.
I’m very shocked and annoyed with this poor level of service and wish I’d stuck to my tried and tested photobook sources in the first place rather than give this shoddy company a chance. Oh and did I say how slow the
software was when I was creating my photobook? What a waste of over 3 hours!

Creative project for January: compile photo book for two other girls who were on my Gokyo Lakes and Everest Base Camp trek at the end of last year.
Outcome: 3 x groupon vouchers to an online photobook printer, Smiley Hippo. Stars for name = 5
The Smiley Hippo OS was easy to download and to learn. It’s very intuitive and I picked it up very quickly — some things are harder to do than others but, if you’re used to working with different systems, you’ll pick up this software very very easily. There was one thing that did prove difficult and I did have to find a way around it, rather than being able to figure out how it worked/​was meant to be done, but I was still able to overcome it, so User-​friendliness = 4
The ordering process was then interesting… I wanted to order three of the same book. When I had started up my project, there hadn’t been an option for «Groupon A4 picture book» so I had clicked on what I thought was the appropriate book and it turned out this was incorrect. Customer Service, however, was very helpful. I did have to ring a number of times before getting through (the line was busy) but this might be the case with any printing service who is busy and, on subsequent calls, I got through straight away. Customer Service = 4.5
The ordering process online = 3.5 because of the slight problem with the coding, but also because I wasn’t able to simply order three of the same book using the vouchers and had to order each one through a separate process, which took longer and also meant paying three lots of P&P — which isn’t much considering the discount on the books but it’s also going to be a bit annoying if they don’t fit through the letterbox and I have to collect them from my «local» apocolyptic industrial estate Post collection depot.
Once it was all finished, it was all quite easy and I love how my book looks. I’ll update when I have the real thing in my hands but, for now, this process was relatively easy, straightforward, and has made me want to make another book with more of the photos!
So, overall, a genuinely smiley hippo; creative project for January = done!