Blurb missed ship date by a week (& counting), but I get a $10 coupon
Since you encourage others to share their experiences, good or bad, here’s mine: I created a book with Blurb, had a lot of trouble uploading (took 3 days to finally get it to work), and placed the order. The book is a photo collection of our wedding photos as part of a first anniversary gift to my wife, since we didn’t do an album. Since it took a while to get book uploaded, and our anniversary is June 2nd, Monday, I placed the order and paid extra for 2nd day shipping so it would be here in plenty of time. I placed the order on May 15th. The estimated ship date was set as May 23rd. So I figured even with a later shipping date, the 2nd day shipping would get it here quickly with no worries. Total cost for a 44-page book with 2nd day shipping was $82.08 to Tennessee. Fast forward to May 23rd, estimated ship date. Order still says processing, and an email response from customer service says since they missed the estimated ship date I should see it go out in the next 1-2 business days (which means the 27th or 28th at earliest because of Memorial Day holiday). So here we are May 29th, order still shows processing. Another email to customer service to ask them if they by some chance got it sent out today if they could overnight it, and I get a reply that they cannot change shipping method. Another email apologizes for the small delay and offers me a $10 credit on my NEXT purchase. In my last email to customer service I said that while I understand that some things such as a delay by a 3rd party publisher are beyond their control, they also have to understand that they gave me an estimated ship date, upon which I based my shipping method and payed extra for 2nd day shipping. Now that they’ve missed that ship date (if it even ships out by Friday the 30th, it will get here Monday the 2nd, a full business day week after the orginal estimate) I feel like Blurb at the very least should refund my 2nd day shipping charge and let me pay ground only. They could even ship it ground as it no longer matters at this point. So overall, without even having seen the book yet, I can’t say I’m pleased at all with Blurb. I know everyone has different experiences, some good, some bad…but a $10 coupon for a future order doesn’t do any good when you don’t plan on using a company’s services again. :(
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There must be something going on with Blurb, because I’m in a similiar situation as yours. I had an estimated ship date of May 27 with two-day shipping. However, the order update page still says "processing" and I’ve had no communication from Blurb as to what’s going on. The book was supposed to be presented to my daughter’s teacher on her last day of school tomorrow, but now we’ll have to sheepishly hand her a proof printout and send her the book later. Very embarassing for myself and my wife. I’m with you… I understand delays happen. But a courtesy email would be the least they could do. And when you give an expected ship date, you need to stick to that. It’s unfortunate, because we would probably have had every parent in the class order a copy too if they could’ve seen the book. Sales opportunities down the tubes.
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Well final response from Blurb is… Sorry…and they refuse to reimburse the difference between ground and 2nd day. I feel if you can’t meet an estimated ship date within a reasonable timeline, then don’t estimate one. Your customers use that date to calculate what type of shipping they will pay for. I’ve ordered my first and last book from Blurb. I had been excited to find them and had recommended them to a few people, which I guess I’ll no longer be doing. Hope others have a better experience than mine.
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I too am in the same boat and I agree with all that’s been said. I ordered (3) 400 page books (probably what’s holding up the production line!) for 3 h.s. seniors graduating on the 31st and I will have nothing to give to their parents. They’ve spent a good chunk of $$ with me and now I have to deliver the dissapointing news. I can only hope that they have a backup gift. This is very embarressing for the parents and for me! My books were ordered on the 17th of May with an estimated ship date of the 27th with 2 day shipping. Since my previous 400 page book took 8 days to process&ship i estimated that I would be able to meet my deadline. And of course I set this expectation for my customer as well. Shame on me! If your going to be in this business you need to be able to set customer expectations accurately and meet them accordingly. There is a segment of this market that depends on meeting event deadlines and needs to be serviced differently than those markets that are not. This company should set job priorites accordingly. Its a sad day! I only hope that another company sees an opportunity here. Anyone happen to know who the real manufacturer is? Peace out.
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A quick Google search found numerous complaints about this issue (shipping well past estimated date) but I didn’t check that before I placed my order. What’s crazy to me is that Blurb refuses to refund the difference between Ground and 2nd day shipping (which is what, $5 or $6?) but they offer me a $10 discount on a future order. My mother is the head of the Retention department for a company that is 2nd largest in their industry. They have doubled in growth EVERY year since they began business, and even after a large merger last year in which a lot of her co-workers were sent looking for new jobs, they not only kept her but promoted her. Why? Because she knows customer service is ABSOLUTELY number one. She and her staff bend over backwards to make sure they keep their customers happy, which for them means even forgiving a contract the customer had signed, if that’s what it will take to possibly have that customer in the future. And here we have a company that won’t budge, not an inch, on something as small as this. It shows you where priorities lie, and unfortunately for the consumer, most of these companies today truly have no idea what the words "customer service" mean at all.
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Hi creekboy24, I’m here to tell you that customer service means very very much to everyone here at Blurb. Your incident should have been escalated to a manager at the very least and for that I apologize. We ran into a bit of a delay with some of our books due to the overwhelming demand of our new ImageWrap product. We tried to get ahead of this curve and send emails as soon as we found out, but obviously didn’t do a very good job of that. Someone from our Customer Support team will be in contact very soon to reimburse you for the extra shipping costs. Let me assure you that this is not the norm and we monitor our printers very carefully to keep this from happening. That said, manufacturing delays do happen for obvious reasons, especially with custom books, which is why we recommend you give yourself ample time around very time sensitive orders. I hope this explains things a bit and again, sorry for the miscommunication. - Kathy
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Hello Kathy,
I appreciate your response. The thing is, I didn’t just voice my concerns here. I said everything I’ve said here regarding the situation to a customer service rep through email, and that was the response I got. I would assume the reps I speak with through email would be able to and should be able to take necessary action. I felt I was being reasonable by simply asking for the difference between second day and ground shipping. I wasn’t even asking for a full shipping refund or anything more. I just felt in all fairness that if you provide a service and an estimate then that’s all the customer has to go by. Maybe my book was delayed because I did choose Image Wrap. I didn’t know that was a new choice as this was my first book, and when I saw it as an option I knew I’d like that better than the dust jacket. Anyway, I’m glad to hear from someone else at Blurb other than who I had been communicating with because I was very disappointed in the responses I received.
Thank you again for replying.
Regards,
Daniel
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Just to show you what I mean, your response (Kathy) would absolutely allow me to consider future purchases with your company. It only takes one person to do the right thing and make all the difference in a customer’s experience. Thank you.
Daniel
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Dear Kathy from Blurb, Read the posts…apparently some of your colleagues at Blurb don’t share your feelings about customer service. I came to the site today to see what was going on because I was afraid I might never get my book…I wanted to see if there was something unusual. Apparently not. I had the same problems and the same ridiculous responses from customer service. My upload was 5/19 and I needed it by 5/29…also an anniversary gift. I paid for next day service…over $22. Website said 5/28 ship date. Today, on day 9 about 10 minutes ago, it changed to "Completed"...so recently that all UPS has is the billing info, not the package. If someone from customer service had said "it will ship on…" it might have helped. And if it "escalated to a manager"....it’s news to me. Given both the late ship date and the inability of customer service to intelligently respond…why on earth would I ever order again and use the $10 coupon?? (And did anyone happen to notice the coupon is only good for about 3 months?) BTW…if a customer service person is authorized to offer me a $10 coupon on my next order…how come they aren’t authorized to refund me $10 on the problem order. Oh…right. That would actually cost Blurb real money. And yes, like Daniel, I had a few emails with customer service before posting here. It shouldn’t have been necessary to do so. Not a good start, guys. Pam
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I’m in the same boat as everyone else. I ordered the book for my girlfriend who was leaving the country for 3 months. I thought it would be a good gift for her to take with her. I ordered the book 14 days before she was supposed to leave and it was supposed to arrive within 7-10 days. Welp, it took 15 days to get there and she was already in New Zealand without the book I had promised to give her. I asked blurb if they would pay to ship it to New Zealand or give me credit so I could write a bigger one and give it to her when I saw her again (I rushed writing it and didn’t get everything I wanted in there so I could get it to her on time, so I thought). The e-mail said they couldn’t do anything and that the arrival dates are only estimates. The first e-mail I sent didn’t even seem like the person who responded read my e-mail. It seemed like a cookie cutter e-mail and didn’t answer my questions, and it had typos so I had trouble understanding a couple parts. That is not good customer service. And estimates. When you give an estimated ship date of 7-10 days, I think everyone interprets this as between 7-10 days. 7-10 sounds like an estimate to me. And when you are 5-8 days off your estimate, that is just plain inexcusable. It’s really a shame because I enjoyed doing the book and was planning on making some more, but not anymore and certainly not with blurb.
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Oh yeah, and I didn’t even order a wrap around, I ordered a dust jacket. So that is not a good excuse.
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Blurb missed my expected shipping date as well—2 days and counting. I did, however, have better luck with customer service—a quick and at least seemingly sincere apology for my book being late as it "experienced a small production delay during its construction." While I’m not happy that it’s late, Blurb did at least upgrade my shipping. So, if my book really is printed in the next day or two, it could actually arrive within the original time frame. Is that really going to happen? I don’t know. But I do appreciate the upgraded shipping as it shows that they are actually trying to provide customer service.
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"Blurb did at least upgrade my shipping." It’s really nice they did, but strange since I was told multiple times that I could not upgrade to overnight or change shipping at all once ordered, even though I was willing to pay the extra charge. On a side note to those of you who ordered the Image Wrap like I did, I received my book and to my complete surprise it does not have two photos or blocks of text that I originally intended to be in the book. When I created the book I added a photo to the front dust jacket flap with text basically telling my wife that the book was for our anniversary, and it included a quote she had given me 5 years ago when we started dating. The back flap was another photo and a "thank you" to our parents who had been very supportive. However when I ordered the book I choose "Image Wrap" and so I thought they would just wrap the image and text onto the inside covers front and back. But apparently if you order Image Wrap it automatically removes the front and rear flap photos and/or text, but I never saw a warning that it would do this. Maybe I just should know as someone who’s never published a book before that this particular feature was only available with a dust jacket, but I did not. Had I known it would remove them I would have kept the dust jacket (or moved those photos and text to their own separate pages) because they were a very important part of the book and I’m very disappointed that they were cut out without warning. A simple pop up box or line of text could warn the buyer that choosing Image Wrap will eliminate the front and rear flap text and images.
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Hi again creekboy24, Sorry about your disappointment around the lack of flaps with ImageWrap. We do have a pop-up "About Hardcover, ImageWrap" that shows up in the shopping card, but I agree, we need to message this much much better. Look for changes very soon. Thanks for feedback! – Kathy
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Yeah, I must have completely missed that pop up. My browser auto blocks them, so it’s very likely that I didn’t see it. I probably should have done a bit more research first on the forums about Image Wrap. Maybe add a bold lined text below the Image Wrap option in addition to the pop up. Thanks again. Daniel
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