Snapfish photo books - not so good (UPDATE)

[sntm]

The quality of the photos is poor -- looks equivalent or worse than a home laser printer. We got ours and there were several errors (photos upside down when they looked fine online, random characters at the bottom of a page.) I emailed customer service to get them replaced -- we'll see what happens.

edited to add:
Well, they agreed to refund us so we sent them back. Am having to struggle to get a brag book together for my mom now. Wish shutterfly did film! Any good mail/online places for the non-digital camera user??????

shannon
not-even-pregnant-yet-overachiever
trying-to-conceive :)
PREGNANT! EDD 6/9/03
mama to Jack 6/6/03

[Rachels]

Ewww. Sorry, Shannon. Shutterfly makes good ones if anyone needs an alternative.

-Rachel
Mom to Abigail Rose
5/18/02

[Momof3Labs]

Yeah, I just got prints from them and was surprised at how lightweight/thin the paper was. The price was good (although Wal-Mart would have been cheaper, but I didn't want to mess with having to go back and pick them up) but actually a little high for the quality, IMO.

[cinrein]

I'm sorry you had that happen. We had some regular 35mm pics developed through them a while back and we thought they were lousy.

Cindy and Anna 2/11/03

[amp]

We haven't ordered a photo book and I don't think we will, but we have gotten film develped through them and have been relatively happy with the quality. We have also been happy with digital prints from Shutterfly, which is easier to upload batches of photos to.

[DDowning]

I have to add that I'm a happy first time customer of Shutterfly as well.

[amp]

Shannon - Shutterfly does develop film, but they don't automatically send all your prints back to you. You have to actually order them. x( Didn't know if you knew that or not. So if you did that, you could order snapbooks through them. HTH!

[angusmom]

For developing my APS film I used to use the mail order place Mystic Color Lab:
http://www.mysticcolorlab.com/

They are very professional and have been in business for years. I highly recommend them. I never had any problems really. I just stopped using them because I had a couple minor issues.

Mainly I got tired of the time it took to send in the film, wait, and get the pictures back. On their part, they generally have your film in and out in 24 hours, but the mail takes forever to deliver from Connecticut (where they are) to Illinois (where I am) and I just didn't feel like enduring that any more when I can go to Walgreens 5 seconds from my house and for the same price have the pictures back in an hour. I do MUCH prefer their APS index prints to Walgreens though.

When I was starting to get tired of the waiting for film to get back, then I had a customer service issue with them. I mailed in a roll of film and forgot to enclose a $1 coupon I had. I emailed them the next day before they even got the film to develop and asked if I could still get the coupon. They said no, the coupon had to be in the mailer with the film.

I completely understand they probably have an automated system that opens thousands of mailers a day and it would be hard to co-ordinate the coupon if not in the envelope with the film. BUT since I had been a customer since 1997 I thought for a stinking dollar they could have put a $1 credit on my account to solve the problem. Since I work in customer service myself, I felt under the circumstances this was reasonable.

So I have never used Mystic again after that. All for $1 they lost me as a customer because I was on the fence about their services anyway, and that decided it.

But really I do recommend them overall!

[peanut4us]

Shannon, I don't know if you've got a Costco in your area, but they do lots of "extra" film stuff there. I have no idea if they do a brag book kind of thing or not... I'm going tomorrow... actually to pick up some developed film :) I'll see if they do that kind of thing, if you like.

[sntm]

No Costco, just Sam's. We liked the convenience of online/mail order for snapfish. I ended up raiding my pictures to put together a book for my mom and ordered a bunch of reprints from snapfish -- they sucked! I guess because they were from the digital scans of the film, but I was very disappointed. We will be looking elsewhere for developing from now on.


shannon
not-even-pregnant-yet-overachiever
trying-to-conceive :)
PREGNANT! EDD 6/9/03
mama to Jack 6/6/03

[peanut4us]

SOrry to hear that. I did check with Costco FWIW and they do not make books like what you are describing. But they do charge just .19 cents a pic to develop from digital. I have no idea what Sams does.

[miki]

I wanted to get a photo book made and my husband found a magazine article about websites that do them. The article said Snapfish was the best bang for the buck but the author liked the book from imagestation.com the best. Anytimephoto.com is supposed to use the same printer for photo books as Imagestation but Anytimephoto's website is supposed to be easier to use. But I haven't actually gotten around to putting my photo's together so I don't know about quality.

[chrissyhowie]

Shannon,

While I've never used them myself, Ofoto has 35mm developing and online picture viewing.
http://www.ofoto.com/HelpFilm.jsp?
They send you pre-paid mailers for you to drop in your film and then they return the negatives to you as well as an email link for your pictures. A friend of mine has used them for years, before she had a digital camera, and still uses them today for both her digital and 35mm needs. I don't think they make prints from already developed film (sorry, this doesn't help with your mom's book!), but maybe you could try them out for future 35mm rolls.

HTH,

[mamarabil]

I used snapfish a couple of years ago for digital travel photos and was very satisfied with the quality. HOWEVER, I've gotten 2 orders recently of the baby's photos and been disappointed in the quality. I don't know if they changed their developing techniques or what happened. They agreed to refund my money/replace photos but I don't know if I want another batch of crappy pictures. The colors were HORRIBLE! I don't think I'd trust them to develop my film - these photos are just too precious.

Mari

[Mama Mae]

Just for fair warning - I'm taking this a little bit off track.

Before we got a digital camera I would order a CD of my photos when I got the film developed. This is available at pretty much all developers nowdays. THEN I would upload them onto my computer and put the ones I wanted to share into Ofoto.com.

Ofoto rocks! It's completely free to create the online albums. You can edit the pictures and add titles too. This is such a treat for my family who all live half way across the country from us.

I haven't personally ordered the prints but a friend of mine did and she was very happy with them. She has high standards too. They have all sorts of purchasing options including books.

At least check it out. You might like it.

[cchavez]

We have been very happy w/ ofoto. We only use digital. hth