Feedback from Samples I Ordered

[Connie]

I recently ordered a bunch of samples of most of my wedding invitations, including 2 sets of Real Foil Invites. Here is what I found:

1. All of the invitations except one, were spot-on as far as colors. I ordered several matte invitations with semi-gloss RSVPs to compare color variations for different paper types, and they matched very well. The colors seem to be a tiny bit richer on the matte vs the semi-gloss, but you'd have to look really closely to see that. The one color exception was a Royal Blue floral invitation, that came out dark navy blue on both the matte and semi-gloss. I am currently working with customer service to find out why the color is so much darker- I showed them a sample hex code on the color picker, and it's nowhere near dark enough to be navy blue!

2. The quality on most of the regular cards was great, except 3 of the RSVPs had slight smudges in one area (all the designs were different, but the smudges were in the same place. It's very slight, and only noticeable on the darker backgrounds, but still doesn't speak well for the printer's quality control.

3. The foil invitations: The foil printing on both was spectacular, and one of the two designs came out super elegant and classy. The other one, though, had some issues (I'm working with customer service on this one, also.) I have a border around the outside, with a thinner border on the inside, and the outer border is VERY uneven. There was almost nothing at the bottom, and much thicker on the top and right side. I'm not sure how precise Zazzle's printers are, but I see a LOT of these types of border designs on Zazzle, so I hope they are not always that irregular! If the printer can't get reasonably even borders on all the sides, I'll have to rethink these designs. The second issue was a dark smudge on the plain white area on 8 of the 10 invitations, which totally took away the classic elegance! I sure hope Zazzle can fix this quality issue, because the foil invitations are otherwise extremely elegant and classy!

I just wanted to let everybody know my results, since there have been so many complaints about quality lately. The colors were mostly spot-on except for one design, and the few smudges were for the most part so slight that probably most people wouldn't notice them. The only exception was one of the foil designs, where the smudge stood out more against the white background.

[PacifierCity]

@Connie 

Thanks for sharing!  I order about 10 birthday cards a month and almost never have issues.  Curious about one thing... Were the envelopes branded?

PC

.......................

[Connie]

No, they weren't. Just plain white.

[Cat]

Thanks so much for sharing your findings! Curious about the foil border that was uneven - was it within the safe area, and how many pixels wide was it? Just asking because I too have lots of designs with a square or rectangular foil border and I'm eager to avoid creating a problem for my customers. Would you mind posting a link to that template?

[Connie]

The border on the foil card wasn't foil, just navy blue. On my original design, the inner border is navy, too, but I changed that to foil when I ordered, and THAT one was fine. So it seems like their foil printing is more precise than the regular ink printing on the outside. (Although I can't say for sure if the outside border would have been any more precise if that was foil.

Here's the link: https://www.zazzle.com/nautical_anchor_gold_foil_monogram_wedding_foil_invitation-256590350038265016

I do have a navy blue background version, with the foil for the outer border as well, but I didn't sample that one. Maybe I will, the next time they have a 50% off sale.

[Cat]

Well that's interesting. It sounds like perhaps the unevenness had more to do with the cut than the printing. Thanks again for sharing your findings. Beautiful design, BTW!

[Connie]

Thank you.

[Scott]

I would avoid borders on printed products like invitations...especially thin borders. The products are made in large quantities and the borders can become uneven when the product is cut down to size.

[Connie]

@Scott Thank you very much for this feedback. This is very helpful, I didn't realize that the borders would be a problem. I see a lot of invitations with thin borders like this, so I thought it was OK. It's too bad, because I really like this look. Going forward, I'll avoid it, but should I delete the ones I already have? Also, does this count for inner borders or frames also, or just the outer border?

[Scott · Accepted solution]

I completely agree that it's a great look, but it's one that essentially demands millimeter-perfect precision. 

When paper products are printed in bulk, they're printed onto very large sheets of paper which are then stacked up and cut by a super strong cutting machine. Below is a YouTube video of what this cutting process looks like. This is great because it allows printers to produce a lot of product, but consider what could happen if that stack of paper isn't stacked up 100% perfectly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXbjvxcFQK0

Now, yes, we do absolutely review products for QC before they're sent out. We're also happy to reprint products when customers aren't 100% satisfied. I also do think that the thin borders do look great when executed properly, but if the invitation isn't printed to absolute perfection then you're going to notice it. So, I don't have any official advice to share here, but I wanted to share a little background as to why this might happen. It'll be up to you (and every other Creator) to weigh the pros and cons of this sort of design to see if it's right for you.

[PetStar]

Wanted to share concern for an order I placed on behalf of a customer who could not order for health reasons. The order was for holiday cards, tote bags and gift wrap. All ordered three weeks before they were needed (the customer was leaving town for the holidays and needed them for her trip).

The cards arrived first. The colors were over saturated and she was not happy with them. They were reprinted and it was promised that QC would make sure they looked better before shipping but they arrived and looked just like the first printing (I've attached a photo of both printings side by side).

The gift wrap arrived next and this time the printing looked faded -- the photo of the dog almost black and white. 

The reusable bag were the most problematic. The design had the images cover the entire printing area but when they arrived, the images were less than 1/4 of the bag. I am attaching what the design looked like in my shop and an image of what the customer received. 

 

I have only ordered cards and the reusable bags in the past and they always were beautiful and I was proud to tell people they were from my shop on Zazzle. This order was quite embarrassing.

Sadly the customer wants a refund for everything and has lost confidence in ordering from Zazzle 😞 Any insight would be appreciated @Scott