Vistaprint

[John Thomson]

Google ‘vistaprint scam’ or similar……..

when you buy from them buried in the small print is a clause which means you agree to join their ‘club’…..they will take £9.95 per month from your debit card and this is impossible to stop without closing your bank account.

John

[David Rowland]

i used vista,,, u get spam galore from them… business cards were okish

its dirt cheap but most of their operation is print farming

vista only charged me normally with orders, never had them steal anything

[John Cooper]

I wouldn’t touch them with a barge pole. They;re scammers & rip-off merchants.

We got caught with their so called club and lost over £180. From memory, they’re based somewhere like the Cayman Islands so probably cheat the british economy too!

[Hugh Potter]

I’ve never had a problem with the club either, only ever paid for my orders and nothing more.

I sometimes do designs for customers and order for them if that what they want, at least that way i get £20 or so for designing it rather than them walking away. My preferred cards are in the region of £90 / 1000,

I use vista for the cheap cards i chuck out with stuff i sell on ebay, no point chucking good cards in with cheap sales! To be fair, I can print better cards on 160gram paper in the laser but it’s cheaper with vista!

quality out of ten? about a 3/10, they’re about the same as i could print onto poor quality 160g paper with a £30 inkjet!

[Martin Pearson]

I wouldn’t lose sleep over it John, if the guy just wants cheap rubbish then he’s gone to the right place. If he is looking for any sort of real quality or any serious design work doing then he will be back.

I have a customer that uses them quite a bit for throw away stuff but if they want any serious work doing then they phone me.
I couldn’t buy the materials for the price he pays for some stuff never mind cover my labour costs and any profit.

They understand it’s a completely different service they get from vista print and have never questioned my pricing for the work I do for them.

[David Hammond]

I have some that clients have left me.

I now use it to my advantage…

Here is a cheap vista print job, that probably thousands of builders have all over the country.

Here is my business card, it’s unique, and it costs £xx.xx for 1000.

Just like with flyers, people get a price, and instantly say someone else will do it cheaper. All I do is ask ‘what paper is that printed on’, 10/10 they don’t have a clue. I then show them our 130gsm glossy stock and tell them that’s what they’ll get and 8/10 will pay the extra.

[Hugh Potter]

I do exactly the same David,

"Here’s one of my cheapy vista cards which are chucked in with ebay sales I can do the design and you can order from them or, here’s one of my quality cards…. which will it be?" 95% of the time it’s the good ones.

in all honesty I make bugger all on cards, the design time plus a tenner on the cards maybe but, i’d sooner make less and putout a quality product than deal in vista poo all day long!

[Tim Painter]

Vista is a rude word!

Loads of trade places doing way better quality on 400gsm board with matt / gloss lam double sided at silly prices.

Why Vista when you can get 250 4:4 400gsm D/S lam for £24 delivered.

Like signage, litho is being de-valued by this cheap sh!te

[David Hammond]

I agree tim. I’ve pm’d hugh with some of my trade printers.

I refuse to sell shite, and refuse to compete with the likes of vista print.

[Andrew Martin]

I have lost a customer for a banner because i could not (would not) compete with vistaprint prices.

Does anyone have first hand knowledge of their banner quality ?

[Chris Wool]

last i saw.

buy the cheapest banner and set the printer to one above draft mode and don’t worry about the quality of supplied art work.

but they do last just long enough for the price.

[Mo Gillis-Coates]

I have some knowledge of how Vista Print works. Firstly I have bought self inking stamps from them to mark my proofs up as approved, and the invoices as proof sent etc etc, these cost me about £10 each and where great value…

Now, this is where they get you….. The delivery. I was given 3 choices for delivery 1) express next day delivery £20 (for 2 poxy rubber stamps that would fit in an envelope and get there first class for 98p?) or 5-7 day delivery £15 or standard delivery 10-20 days £5

I chose the standard not being in a rush… guess what? I had them in 2 days! lol…

Also………….. Vista make their money selling databases, everyone who signs up gets put on a database and sold to other companies to canvas. Their lists are massive and sell for 100’s of thousands of pounds, this is because the customers on them are customers who spend money and are considered "Red Hot" leads in business.

I have a customer who bought some magnetics from them 6 months ago, those mags are now useless, so far he has bought 3 sets from me, and tshirts, he used the same logo from the vista site and design for the new ones so easy job for me.

I also got a sale yesterday from a customer who was going to buy some mags from Vista but got so confused and irritated with the design process that he phoned me told me what he wanted, sent over his ideas and bought a set of mine for quite a lot more than vista where charging, and he paid up front with his credit card!

they use cheap sub standard (probably copy) materials for everything and you have to design your own stuff…….. If your going to spend money on promotional material it makes sense to get it right right? Or your just throwing money in the bin, cos if your design sucks mr customer, that’s exactly where your business card is going…….. In The bin!

"oh I’m sorry dave the plummer man, how rude of me, you have plenty of design experience yes?……………..No?"

–> this is very appropriate http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YBxeDN4 … re=related

I get my business cards from Good Print, they have produced some excellent cards for me. I think I paid about £50 for 500 double sided matt finish colour 400gsm cards with curved corners, again they try to stab you with delivery but if your not in a rush…..

I know someone who has had banners from them I will check for you

BigMo

[David Hammond]

I hate re-designing crap from vista.

A plummers business card with dice on it???

Then they want their van doing. ‘I have a logo and everything its on vista print’

No use because you can"t download it, and you’re probably breaching copyright if you did use it?

We have a few print suppliers for business cards very competitive and postage is included. I’m sure Hugh will agree. I’ll post a link in the uksg area, as they are exclusively a trade printer.

[Martin Pearson]

Andrew, as I said earlier in the thread I have a customer who uses them for anything throw away that he needs.
This includes some small banners and to be honest I wouldn’t want to sell them to my customers at any price. Your right not to try and compete as we are unlikely to be talking like for like when it comes to materials.

The ones I have seen are very poor quality, extremely thin pvc and the print is done on draft mode I would think because blocks of colour all had quite bad banding. They start to fade pretty quickly as well so wouldn’t do if you needed them to last.

Best thing would probably be to try and get hold of one so you can physically show customers what they are getting compared to the product you are selling.

[Hugh Potter]

I have one of their mags here that i kept when a customer asked me to bin them – after supplying him with mags that actually looked nice!

great for showing customers what they’re gonna get for their £20, they’re small and very thin, vs nice quality mag sheet at whatever size that really need!