Shutterfly.Com: Digital Photo Website Review

We have an entire wall in our home dedicated to family tree type photos, mostly old black and white shots. We decided it was time to add some color with newer photos and update the "wall of fame". We started going through our photos and discovered a problem - most of the pictures we had taken over the past few years are in digital format only so we had no hardcopy prints. With the economy the way it is, we didn't want to spend a lot of money on this project. So I searched the net, found a coupon for some free prints at Shutterfly.com, and clicked onto the Shutterfly website to check out their services.

The Shutterfly.com headline title page says "Share, Print, or Develop Your Digital Photos". The website is colorful, has a nice layout, and is easy to navigate. I had to sign up for a free membership to place an order with them, but the signup process was quick and easy.

Next, I had to create a location (album) on their website to house my photos. After creating my album, it was time to upload the photos. The uploading process was very quick and easy using the user-friendly interface. You can upload several photos all at once or upload one by one, depending on your preference. The photos have to be in .jpeg format.

Once all the photos were uploaded I clicked on "order prints". This brought up a page where I selected the size and quantity of the prints to order. When placing an order you can choose between matte or glossy finish. You can also have a message printed on the back of each print, which I thought was a nice feature. The price of each print depends on the size you want and whether you want a simple photo print or if you want the photo put on a greeting card, mug, or some other specialty item.

After uploading your photos you can enhance them yourself by cropping them, adding special effects, or adding borders. I didn't have a need to utilize this feature of the website because my son is a graphic artist and is very familiar with photo editing, so he edited all my photos before I uploaded them.

Everything went smoothly during the uploading process and I completed my order. Within a few minutes I received a confirmation email stating my order had been received and was given a date range of 09/26/08 - 10/01/08 for when my photos would arrive. All that was left was to wait for the postman.

I had a long wait as it turns out ... my order never arrived. The estimated arrival dates of 09/26/08 - 10/01/08 came and went and I had no photos. So on 10/03/08 I contacted Shutterfly's customer service department using the email address on their "contact us" page. I emailed them at 8:30 a.m. and received a response by 10:00 a.m. While it was refreshing to get a quick response, I was not happy with the message contained in the response. Evidently, my first order was somehow never really processed, even though I had gotten a confirmation email. I was informed the order would have to be placed again but that they would ship Priority at no additional charge to me due to the inconvenience of my first order being lost. About 30 minutes later I get another email from them thanking me for my order and giving a new estimated arrival date range of 10/09/08 - 10/13/08. This did not seem like "priority" to me but by this point I was disillusioned with the company; they had not made a good first impression on me as a new customer.

My prints finally arrived on 10/11/08 ... now I'll talk about the finished product. I had ordered 20 prints of varying size and layout. Out of the 20 only 8 were acceptable and the rest were a mess in one way or another. The cropping was way off and it seemed like there was no human intervention at all to check the quality of the finished photo prints. In several prints, the tops of heads were cut off. Some of the other prints were off center so that the arms of people weren't showing when it could have easily been prevented had the photo been cropped correctly. I blame Shutterfly for the cropping errors because as part of the ordering process their website has a "preview print" option so you can see what the final product will look like before you hit the order button. They will also alert you if you upload a digital image that does not have enough pixels to create the size of print you want.

If I had paid for these photos I would have contacted Shutterfly for a refund. Since I had used a free coupon and only paid $2.15 for shipping, I tossed it up to a lesson learned. Perhaps since I had used a coupon and the prints were free whoever processed my order didn't take the proper care they should have. If that is the case, then Shutterfly needs to look into their customer service. I was a new customer and a company should always go out of their way to make a new customer happy if they want repeat business.

Whatever the reason for the dismal results, based on the bad quality of the prints I received I can only give the company 1 out of 5 stars. While I appreciate their fast response to my initial complaint of not receiving my order, the lack of quality in the final product is not acceptable to me. I will not use Shutterfly in the future and suggest if you are considering utilizing their service that you proceed with caution.

If you've ever used Shutterfly.com feel free to leave a comment with your experience, good or bad.