Troy in Texas ordered his photo Christmas cards a bit late from Snapfish, and experienced something beautiful and unexpected: the company offered customers store credit to make up for weather delays that weren’t even the company’s fault. Gasp!

Following our family tradition, we waited until this week to take a picture for our Christmas cards. Because we never manage to get them out before Christmas anyway, this isn’t a big deal, but we ordered them from Snapfish today [December 20th] to take advantage of the free shipping. About four hours later, we received the email below.

Living as we do in Texas, I wasn’t aware of the extent of the weather problems until today while watching NFL games, and didn’t expect to get the pictures before Christmas in any case. We’ve always been satisfied with Snapfish, and just having them let us know about the problems would have been enough, but throwing in some extra prints for problems beyond their control seems to be going above and beyond.

Dear Snapfish customer,

We are writing to you about your recent order # XXXXXXXX.

Snapfish produces our custom-printed products at multiple locations around the country and we have identified your order as one that is being printed this weekend at our facility in Maryland, outside Washington D.C.

The Washington Area is experiencing a record snowfall for December and yesterday we had blizzard conditions at the plant. We are happy to report that a great number of employees came in through the snow to work this weekend so we expect to finish all orders that have been placed already, including yours. But travel conditions are not good. Many of our shipping methods will have great difficulty simply moving around from plant to airport on the snow-covered highways. For example, Fed Ex has closed their local offices until Monday, Dec. 21st.

While the weather is obviously out of our control and we are doing everything we possibly can to get your order printed and shipped to you by Thursday Dec. 24th, we wanted to let you know there’s a chance of delay so you can make alternate gift plans if necessary. We promise to keep you updated on the status of your order, and you will receive email as soon as it ships from the plant.
As a way of showing our appreciation to you, we have placed 50 free 4×6 mail-order print credits into your Snapfish account, which you can use at any time in the future.

We sincerely apologize for this possible delay, but we knew you would want to know the latest news on the status of your order.

Your Snapfish Team

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