Image proportions different on product than in editor

[nharveyart]

Has anyone else had an experience with an image appearing compressed when displayed on a product?

I uploaded the image of my personal holiday card which contains circles. But on the sample card image they appear slightly squashed and oval. The colors also appear somewhat duller.

I contacted customer service and sent them the image I'm including here that shows the same page (linked from my saved designs) opened in 2 different windows. One has the enlarged the card image, the other shows it in the editing tool, and I took a screenshot of them side by side to show the difference. (I've blurred the design in the circles since this is for personal use and I'm not ready to share it.)

In their response they admitted seeing a difference, but only suggested to check my image specs (yes...it's a suitable size, one JPG & one PNG, 300ppi). They said that how the image appears on the product is how it will print and maybe I should order some samples.

I've done many cards over the years and never had this issue, or at least not that I've noticed. I proceeded to upload the image at several other sites where I could consider buying my cards (including Redbubble, CafePress, Walmart), and not one of them displayed the image on a card differently from the original.

Does anyone have any insights into this?

[Sara_H]

@nharveyart it could just be the way the insitu is mapped with the artwork and a perspective thing to make it look like a real card. 

It's just a visual anomaly and rest assured - your cards will be printed perfectly at the right angle as seen in the design tool - all mine have

But as Customer Service said - for you to be 100% sure that you're happy with the way it prints- order a sample and see for yourself

[nharveyart]

I had wondered about that. The angle of the full card photo doesn't seem enough to make as much difference as it does, but that's just my opinion.

This is why I asked customer service. I would think they'd know the answer to that, but they specifically said that this would be how it printed.  One even took the liberty of "playing" with my image to try to make the circles look less squashed (I'd have prefered they'd asked my consent first). All they did was change the size of the circles layer, and it made little difference.

While I understand that ordering a sample would answer questions, these are holiday cards which I need to start writing in and mailing soon. I do not have the time to wait for samples before ordering the rest and waiting for those. I've already ordered this design from another site. At this point, I have bigger questions about Zazzle, like whether customer service knows what it's talking about or whether there might be a glitch in the software that no one wants to check. Perhaps I will have to order a sample to answer help me with that.