My boys LOVE the Shutterfly books I've made in the past, but they were too pricey for a whole team of 61 kiddos. We started hunting around for a small version that was affordable and stumbled upon a company named Mixbook that had 4x6 soft cover mini-albums for $6.99. Now this is doable!
So, let's see...we've got price, page arrangement features, and lots of pages under the "Good" column.
The pictures came out crisp and clear, and it's a cute little size. Also "Good".
My order of 60+ books came 10 days before they were scheduled! Good, good, good! Thank goodness I didn't buck up the extra $35 they were asking for to rush delivery!
The "Bad and the Ugly" falls all on the shoulders of shipping prices. Here is the 5 lb. box that measures, 9x5x6 inches that arrived today. What would you imagine a box this size would cost to ship? Well, I ship my 12 lb. frame boxes that measure 22x22x4 inches every week for around $15.00
Mixbook charged me $92.90 to ship this tiny box from California to Pennsylvania! I contacted the customer service department to question the shipping price and they referred me to the shipping charges explanation page of their website. I checked it and sure enough, it was calculated properly according to their policy. Too bad I didn't think to check that page BEFORE making the albums. It wasn't until I'd added everything to my cart and did a double take at the shipping charge that I investigated. It never would have occurred to me that one small box of albums shipped all together would run almost $100 to ship. So, shame on me?
Since I had already spent weeks arranging photos in 60+ photo books, I worked it out to pay their exorbitant shipping charges...very grudgingly.
So, yes, I got ripped off on shipping charges and Mixbook is dancing their way to the bank with $92.90 from our non-profit wrestling team of kids aged K-6 but I have tiny memory books to help the boys (and one girl!) remember wrestling season 2012-13. Thank goodness I was able to find a coupon online to help absorb some of the shipping costs!
**Obviously I wasn't paid or compensated in any way to write this review for Mixbook.**
There's something so hard to swallow about extortionate shipping costs isn't there!
ReplyDeleteYes! It killed me!
Delete$92 for shipping? That's abhorrent, appalling, horrific...yeah, you get what I'm trying to say. I guess that's how they compensate for charging such low prices, they make up for it in the shipping.
DeleteThe pics you showed of the books look really nice though. You did a good job putting them together.
Ugh! Interesting how there is always a way to stick it to you with a lot of these companies. So sorry! But on a positive note, the books look fantastic, from what I can see.
ReplyDeleteThe books look fabulous but the shipping..... that is simply horrendous!
ReplyDeleteI often have this debate with my wife about shipping charges. So many people seem to get hung up on how charges are broken out and what a 'fair' price is for something, when prices are subjective and shipping prices are ripe for markups and margins the same way that product prices are. The difference, I suppose, is that there's a bit more transparency in ship prices because we're all aware of approximately what it 'costs' to ship something, whereas most consumers aren't necessarily familiar with the cost basis of something like a photobook.
ReplyDeleteSo IMHO, this isn't an issue of 'shame on Mixbook for charging so much for shipping' as it is, 'shame on Mixbook for not doing a better job of how they display their pricing so that it doesn't appear that they're gouging customers on shipping'.
But in the end, as a consumer, I'd strongly urge you to simply consider 'all in' pricing and not get hung up on what the product cost is versus what the shipping cost is...
Yup, and they'll charge you different shipping depending on your discount, too. We've ordered 2 times from Mixbook and the exact same item was either $35 or $20 shipping. Despicable. Hopefully some other company will compete them into more honest business practices.
ReplyDelete