Photobox: Problems BUT great customer service too

Canon EF 70-200mm f/4.0L USM

02/17/2006 05:10:10 PM · #1

I think I mentioned in another post somewhere that I ordered some Photobooks from Photobox.co.uk recently? Here's my feedback so far:

I received the books today.

Firstly, I'm pretty happy with the quality of the book and the printing itself.

Keeping in mind that the price is pretty darn low (especially when ordering 5 or more copies (which I did) and when ordering during the February 25% off promotion (which I did) but even when paying the full Â£20 per book). The pricing is aimed at amateurs wanting a nice keepsake not pros that want professional quality finishing.

But, hard cover, printing and paper quality are acceptable to me and certainly seem better than Qoop, having spoken to a friend who used them for a photobook recently.

There IS a problem with my order which I'll elaborate on below but I just want to say right now that Photobox customer service have responded just as well as they always do and are on the case and will be sending out replacement books as soon as possible.

The situation: Photobox has only recently introduced their Photobook product and is still experiencing teething problems. They are also only able to offer 20 page books (though they are hoping to offer the ability to add more pages in the not too distant future) and have a few minor interface glitches.

Why did I choose them: I wanted a hardback landscape orientation book, preferably printed in the UK to reduce on postage time and costs, offering full bleed printing with the ability to drop in full page size image files rather than use existing page design templates.

Their help pages showed that this was possible and gave me the resolution size for the image as "roughly 3330 x 2650 pixels". I phoned to check what was meant by "roughly" as I wanted to work to an accurate size template and asked at that point how much I might expect to lose to cropping and gutter and whether I needed to include extra pixels for crop inaccuracies or not? I was told that the size was exactly correct and that I would not lose anything at all to crop as pages were printed onto precut sheets. Pixel size was accurate not rough. Did make me wonder why it is phrased as such in their help files but ok...

So I spent weeks and weeks and weeks processing and cropping images into page layouts containing several images per page. I finally finished the files, saved them out as RGB jpegs and loaded them into the book.

The problem: I have lost nearly a centimetre off the bottom of every page and a chunk at the top too, though not as much. This is an absolute nightmare as my design incorporates square cropped images, several to a page; top row flush to top of page, third row flush to bottom of page. The middle row are perfectly square, the top ones almost and the bottom ones completely not. Not to mention that some pages include text of the wedding readings and are missing the bottom line off completely!

So I was practically in tears. If they had actually made a mistake on the exact size of a page it would take me many months to recrop all the images and recreate all the pages.

I called, explained briefly to a woman and was put through to techie guy who was very nice indeed. I think he could tell I was on the verge of crying at him at the start of the call!

Upshot is:- Although a few customers have used their full page layout (most use their predesigned layouts and drop images into the appropriate slots) they have the full page layout either for single images filling teh entire page (where losing a chunk off the bottom has not been an issue) or for layouts including ample negative space where it's also not an issue. My book, and two orders by customers that were put in just one and two days before mine, are the first they have had since launching the photobook product recently that include detailed and very exacting full page layouts that highlight the problem. It doesn't affect many customers hence not having received any complaints previously or noticed it themselves during testing.

So he explained that they had been alerted to the problem a couple of days ago, sadly just after my books had been printed and sent out, and have in those two days worked out where the problem lies! I started to feel hopeful again!

Apparently the system takes the jpeg files we upload and converts them into PDFs that are then used for the printing. The first problem seems to lie in this arena in that the PDFs are being created slightly too large (if I understand things correctly) height wise. (I didn't lose anything left or right edges, that I could tell though it wouldn't be so problematic with my chosen page designs). The second problem is that, when printing, their system is dropping this oversized image into place on the page such that the bottom is cropped much more than the top.

The good news is he's fairly sure they can resolve both problems, indeed they have been working on this for the last two days since first being alerted to it. He also said that if they can't sort it out quickly, he will resolve it manually for me, by creating the appropriate PDF files from the jpegs manually and so on.

After noticing the cropping problem, I also noticed that one of my pages, a collage of fireworks which I'd cut and paste and dropped in over a black background, showed clear outlines where I'd cropped around their individual shapes - my monitor IS calibrated but only with Adobe Gamma - and the black background on these obviously wasn't as black as the true black background I dropped them all onto. I asked Nice Techie Guy whether he minded, since he was redoing my books anyway, if I replaced the image file for that page to correct this problem and he encouraged me to do so. I adjusted my calibration to deliberately show lots of detail in the shadows and softened the outlines of each firework burst selection against the background and emailed the new file to him as instructed.

Oh and I mentioned to him that before putting the order in I had phoned and mentioned I'd be placing an order for 5 books, that quality was very important to me and did they want to print and send just one book first to make sure it was OK and then send the other 4? They said no! He laughed ruefully and said that they had obviously been overconfident but that he appreciated the offer, even though they hadn't taken it up and that he would take it up for the reprints!

Now I just have to wait for the books to be redone! I told him not to rush, that I just wanted them to be right and I did appreciate that it was a new service with teething problems.

So there you have it - I'll let you know whether the reprints sort the problems out or not.

Oh, and moire printing patterns aren't obviously visible to the naked eye as they are in Floyd's Qoop book. The printing isn't coffee table book perfect (but to be honest, the original images aren't either as most were shot indoors at might higher ISO than I would have liked because lighting conditions weren't great) but I am happy with the quality for the price. The cover is nice and plain. The branding is only an additional white page at the end and could easily be cut out (with care) as there's another black sheet after that and then the inside back cover, also black.

OH and on another issue, PRINTS:

I have used Photobox for prints before and been very happy but on a recent order the colour saturation was just all wrong - and I checked my monitor and knew it was not a problem at my end. Called them and spoke to another techie and he explained that the printers they use for regular prints have an automated feature that uses the EXIF data in the images (they couldn't tell me exactly which bits of it are used) to "improve" prints by adjusting contrast, colour balance, saturation etc. I think the reason I hadn't encountered it in the past is that I'd sent images that didn't have any EXIF because of how I'd created the final version JPEG. So he said he'd strip out the EXIF on my files and print them again for me and if this resolves the problem, he will set a note on my account that this needs to be done for all images I send for printing. If it doesn't, we'll talk again and try and work out the problem.

This EXIF thing IS in their Help files but only if you search on the term "EXIF" which I would never think of doing - it wouldn't occur to me that their printers would do this. It's not mentioned (that I could see) under standard instructions and info on prints and I am pretty careful about reading all that stuff before using this kind of service.

As I said, I've used Photobox for ages, and recommended them to many friends. What sets them apart for me is that when there is a problem they ALWAYS respond positively about resolving it even if that means redoing an order not once but more than once! They want to get it right! To me how a company deals with the cockups is more important than whether they get it right more of the time since no one gets it right ALL the time!

I'll let you know on both prints and books whether the reprints resolve the issues!

brownt

Canon EOS-450D Rebel XSi

02/17/2006 05:18:30 PM · #2

Excellent post, great timing too!

I've spent ages making one of these books up to as a birthday present. I've finished doing it all now, theres a few full pages so hopefully they will be ok...

Canon EF 70-200mm f/4.0L USM

02/17/2006 05:27:28 PM · #3

If you have full pages to drop into their full page layout I'd hold off for a few days until they resolve this issue... I'll post as SOON as I get my reprinted books!

brownt

Canon EOS-450D Rebel XSi

02/18/2006 09:19:44 AM · #4

Thanks!

BobsterLobster

Fujifilm FinePix S3 Pro

Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR II

02/18/2006 09:24:25 AM · #5

Thanks for the heads up Kavey!
I've spoken to customer service at Photobox myself a few times... they are very lovely and helpful.

02/18/2006 11:37:56 AM · #6

Indeed, they always have been when I've spoken to them too...

These two situations though have shown me quite how willing to resolve problems they are... I'm sure they will find solutions to both ASAP.

Nikon AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 ED

04/21/2006 07:04:35 AM · #7

The fixed books finally arrived yesterday...

Spoke to the guy (who isn't normally tech support, I think he might be higher up than that actually) and basically, what a learning curve it's been for them - first off they worked out early on that the pixel size they had provided for the pages was incorrect - they fixed that on their information/ help pages ASAP but that meant all my very carefully planned pages were the wrong size. Mine couldn't just be stretched because the design is all about perfect squares within a rectangular page layout! Aaagh! And all the images used within each page had been cropped specifically to fit that template!

The nice man said if I sent him all the original photoshop files (with layers etc still in place) that HE would do all the work on redoing each page. Phew!

He then had some further problems because, in fixing another problem they ended up with the bleed not working properly on one edge - leading to white edges to the pages.

Well he finally sorted it out and I got my books.

There are a couple of very minor issues remaining - for example on one of the pages I have two full colour vertical images on each side and in the middle of the two is a faded watercolour style image that I've dropped in between (and behind). In his redo, he's resized them all but dropped that layer infront and as it's a pixel wider than it should be it means there's a pixel grey ghosting edge on the picture next to it.

But I can live with that and I'm very happy in the main.

Because of how long it's taken he's doing me some credit which I'll be putting towards future orders.

So all is good in the world of Kavey and Photobox Photobooks!

Apple iPhone 5

04/21/2006 08:12:46 AM · #8

Good post Kavey, glad to hear it's all being sorted out.

I'd just like to add that I use photobox for prints, and also had a few calendars printed last year - I've been very happy with the price, the quality, and the service/delivery.