Karina writes that she found a fantastic promotion from Snapfish: order one photo book, get two free. A great deal if you want to try putting your photos in printed book form. Snapfish can’t quite get it together to actually print and send Karina’s books, though. They keep canceling her order without issuing a refund, and no one seems to know why.

I did a search on your website, and I must say that I was a bit shocked that consumerist hasn’t featured other stories about how poor a job snapfish does. So, here’s my (ongoing) saga.

These guys just can’t seem to get it right…

I ordered photobooks during an awesome promotion they were running, Buy 1 photobook, get 2 free! What a deal!!!!….or so I thought.

On the night of November 8th, I spent over 3 hours creating three different photobooks. The offer was expiring that night, so I had to get the books built and then ordered before midnight. I pored over 3 years worth of photos, not an easy feat, picking out only the best shots and then painstakingly organizing them into the books. I felt such a relief when I finalized the order at 11:47pm. It was done and I was happy to sit back and wait for my photobooks.

About a week later, I checked my account to see if the books had shipped yet. As I had spent so much time designing the photobooks, I was very sad to discover that the order had been cancelled by snapfish, without an email notification, no less. I thought there must be some mistake, so I emailed customer service only to find out that the order had experienced a technical error that could not be resolved. With the order cancelled, snapfish customer service told me that I could put in a new order and they would manually apply the coupon so that I could get my 2 free photobooks. I was a little skeptical, but I went for it, anyway.

I reordered the books on November 22nd and emailed Snapfish who promptly issued a credit for the 2 free photobooks. I thought I was out of the woods and that my books would be in production and on the way to me in no time….boy, was I wrong!

Well, now it’s been a month since I placed the first order and I still don’t have my photobooks, but snapfish has my money….

I did recieve the credit for the 2 free photobooks, but when I look at my order history, the order status states “cancelled”. I just checked my credit card bill and they haven’t refunded the full purchase. So, basically, I don’t have any photobooks in production, but I do have over $60 in limbo.

I clicked on the help button on their website and of course it fails to load. I’ve emailed multiple times only to receive an email stating that “Your issue has been escalated to me. I will send you an email when I have the issue resolved”, whatever that means. Right now, I’ve been on hold with Snapfish customer service for over 20 minutes listening to some horrible jazz music interspersed with ads for HP products.

In the meantime, I’m worrying that these photobooks won’t arrive in time for the holidays and that I’ll never see my $60.

C’mon, guys, printing photobooks shouldn’t be this difficult!

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