Staples Online Order Review

Placing an online order for prints at Staples should be an easy 1-2-3 process, but there are some reasons why you should stay away from their order system. Slow upload rates, occasional poor service, or them never receiving your order. Let's at each reason in depth.

Most of your documents are going to be about half of an MB (megabyte) to several of them (for color presentations and posters). While these are normal document sizes, the Staples online client seems ill prepared for such sizes. To test how long it would take, I got a PDF file of mine that was around a very modest 1 MB. After two minutes of pointless waiting, the client finally recognized my document and started upload. After about 10 minutes or so it was finally up there. This is a ridiculous amount of time, especially for those of you with larger documents, or more than one to attach.

As for poor service, this does matter on the staff, but there is a reason why they do not like the times posted on the online orders. You see, when placing the online orders, it tells you a certain timeframe you can expect the document finished by, and you can also pay to have it rushed for a few hours less. While this seems good to you, you have to remember this does not take the staff and its workload from customers actually at the store into consideration.

There are times when they become very busy, usually around holidays but even during other regular days, and may not be able to finish your printing job by the designated time. For this reason alone you should always call them about 10-20 minutes after your job was sent to consult them and get a more realistic timeframe. Sometimes you may be pleasantly surprised to find out they have nothing to do and your job can get done hours earlier.

You also have to call and ensure they received your order. The order is sent directly to their mail box. There are many other orders, both from Staples.com as well as people who directly email them, and their inbox quickly fills up. If that is to happen, they will never receive the note saying they have a new online order, and thereby cannot complete what they have never seen. By calling, it not only makes them check to see if the order really went through, but also makes them work on it more quickly (if their schedule allows so).

While there are problems with the online system, you tend to get better prices than if you were to physically go into the store, so that makes it worth it. However, remember it could take forever for your documents to upload, so be ready for it, and call them to ensure everything can be done by the time you need it completed.