Overnight Prints is Anything but Overnight Printing

I normally don’t make posts calling a company out like this, but Overnight Prints has royally messed up a component of the marketing I was planning on doing at Affiliate Summit West so please bear with me as I work my writhing anger out through my keyboard.

If you are not a big reader and want the short version, check out this video. It pretty much says it all:

We wanted to have some post cards printed up about Top Affiliate Challenge so we could distribute them at Affiliate Summit West in Vegas. Kimberly spent a couple days designing and tweaking them so they were just right.

Overnight Prints did our business cards, and although they arrived nearly a week later than when they were promised, we have received many compliments on them.

I know things go wrong sometimes, and I was willing to chalk up the late business cards to a fluke. We ordered the post cards from their website on 2/20/2008 and paid an outrageous $65 for Next Day Air Saver UPS shipping just to make sure they got here on time.

The cards were supposed to arrive today, so we logged on to our Overnight Prints account and checked the status of our order just to make sure (thank God Kim is thorough). Shockingly, the cards have been printed, but not shipped. We leave for the Summit on Sunday, and today is Friday. We called their customer service line to see what could be done to get them here Next Day Saturday Delivery.

Now, we ship things from California all the time Next Day Saturday delivery. Its nothing new, and we know it costs more and we were prepared to pay. But the Overnight prints operator stunned us when he said that UPS does not ship Saturdays from their warehouse.

WHAT?!? The UPS website clearly shows that Saturday Shipping is available.

It turns out the only thing we could do was change the shipping address to our hotel in Vegas and HOPE they get there on Monday while there is still a little time to hand them out.

I decided to do some Google searching (I know day late, dollar short) and see what other people are saying about Overnight Prints. Lets just say it is not good.

I was able to find multiple complaints just like mine dating from 2004 to present. This is the email I just sent to Overnight Prints expressing my displeasure with their service and shipping policies:

I found this email address on a blog, and I wanted to email you to let you know how disappointed I am with your turn around time, shipping policies, and customer service.

We ordered business cards for a new company we started, and they arrived a week later that when they were promised. I figured that was a glitch, and being in business I know that can happen to anyone.

So now we have ordered 500 post cards to distribute at Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas (order #97177934 placed on 2/20/2008). We were given the impression from your website that if we paid for the next day air $65.00 shipping option, we would have our cards by today (Friday).

We checked the website this morning to see that the cards had been printed, but not shipped, which means they will not arrive in time for our trip. We called your customer service line and pleaded with the operator for Saturday shipment – we even offered to pay more for it. The operator told us that UPS does not ship Saturday delivery from your California warehouse.

That is when I started to get mad. We ship things all the time Saturday delivery from San Jose, and a simple check of the UPS website shows that next day Saturday shipping is available from your location. So either the operator didn’t know what they were saying, or ONP just doesn’t want to ship things Saturday delivery.

This is a MAJOR problem for us, and the only thing we could have the operator do is change the shipping address to our hotel in Las Vegas. We will at least have the cards for ½ of the conference.

I understand things happen, but when I Google your company and the word complaint, I see a mile long litany of complaints dating from 2004 to October 2007. I can only assume that late shipping and under delivery are part of your corporate culture, and not a passing problem.

The ONLY reason I am not asking for a refund is that no one else can print these cards before Sunday morning. I am deeply disappointed with your service and will not be ordering from you in the future for anything that is remotely time sensitive.

Like most of the other people online, I don’t expect a reply back. Have you had problems with Overnight Prints? Have you had excellent service from them? I sincerely hope that my experience is unique, but based on what I have read I am not sure how that could possibly be the case.