Hi.
Effective today we’ve increased our prices of most photographic prints, some of our book range, and other photo gifts.
We’ve taken a long time over this, as we realise it’s not a popular thing to do, however we felt we couldn’t delay a decision any longer. As with most manufacturers, we’ve found that our material and energy costs are going up fast, to the extent that we can no longer absorb these increases and continue to invest in capacity and new services at the rate we’re committed to.
On average, we’ve kept increases to around 5%, so not too bad, and we kept away from our most popular print sizes wherever we could. Even after these increases, we believe we’re still extremely competitive in respect of price, quality and turnaround. Post here, of course, if you think differently!
So apologies that we’re asking you to pay a bit more for some products. In fact it’s our first significant price increase here for a number of years, but I hope you understand our reasons.
Mark
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I find you are one if not the best site around. I enjoy using it and wish I could take more snaps so that I dont use the same ones over again. I must learn to be more patient! I have never received any goods I am not pleased with, although I am newer than most to doing things on the computer. Before I went to town but its more fun this way.
You were asking for ideas, how about teatowels etc as I see you do cushions so I assume it would be along the same path. I love giving my pictures on items to people, and I have to say I have had comments from a charity, who wants to use one of my pictures. Also a pro said he liked them. Most unusual for me to get praise. I even have Parkinsons disease to deal with, so its extra hard. One day perhaps you will choose one of mine, you never know.
Anyway I was really saying that your goods are worth the rise, as they are going up in all directions everywhere. Keep up the good work.
Regards
Sue Dear
PS I like your idea of having a chat page to keep us up to date.
Went to buy a card from greetings and was charged £1.50 postage when elsewhere on your site it quite clearly states the price for one card is £0.40 postage which is what you would expect to pay for a first class item.
I reported it and was given a refund. Five days later i go to do another card and am still charged £1.50 postage. Sort it out.
I ordered a Photobook from you nearly two weeks ago for an employee who was leaving. I chose Photobox over other companies as you promised a three day turnaround which should have allowed plenty of time for the book to have arrived, plus some extra days. When the book had not arrived on time I rang your company to be informed that “there was a problem with the servers and my book was at the binding stages.” I have rung again today six days later to be told “there was a problem with the servers and my book was still at the binding stages.” My employee has now left and your Marketing Department are all conveniently “in meetings”. Why have I not received an email apologising for your disgraceful service? Why is there not a post on this blog explaining the problems you have been having and the knock-on effect to your service? Why do I have to keep phoning you to resolve this? Your “customer care” is atrocious and you have a nerve putting your prices up. Sort out your services first and send me the Photobook I paid for weeks ago.
I ordered photobooks and it appears from the website that they will be delivered the next day as long as you do the order by 4pm. It’s only later when you get to the checkout stage that you are told photobooks take a week. Well two weeks later I am still waiting!! I have phoned up three or four times and each time have been told they are being dispatched, which is clearly untrue. Your customer service operators are very nice but either they are making up information or they don’t know what the truth is. The upshot of this is that two weeks after ordering an item I thought took a day to arrive I am still waiting.
Same problem with Photobooks here (though have just had a dispatch email, so hope this is the end of the delay). If you can’t cope with demand during your 2 for 1 offers you really ought to tell people.
I don’t think people mind paying a little extra for good service - shame the service is so atrocious at the moment. I have to set aside an hour every week to spend on hold to the helpline because photobox have messed something else up. Will anyone ever tell me when you fix the pro-gallery problem that means I can’t rotate my photos? Or do I have to wait a month and then find out by accident it’s fixed - or even better that you have no intention of fixing it and I get to spend another 18 hours uploading all the photos again - which incidentally, I’ll already have to do, as despite promises to the contrary, the album did not appear on the new website? I still expect a response to a query within one business day too - how come I never get one?
I’ve just uploaded some photos, but the site now won’t let me rotate images properly. Instead of rotating the images, it just takes a portrait oriented crop of the unrotated image!
Sorry to say the days of my bigging photobox up to friends and colleagues has long gone, ever since an appallingly handled photo book order a few weeks back. I’m now listening out for recommendations for elsewhere.
Sorry - also just found that the quality of pictures when viewed in slide show is now appalling. All soft and fuzzy, almost like I have uploaded very low rez images - which I haven’t. Now when I share these photos I will have to warn people NOT to view them in slide show.
Sort it out photobox - your standards seem to be on a fast downward spiral.
The relationship of all the price increases to the frequent ’special offers’ will probably be of more signifcance. For example if offers become less regular, the price increases will have an even greater impact. Gone are any 3p prints. Gone are the 4p prints. Next stop?
Customer Useage / Reward ratio may be an area to look at.
Prices can be stomached whilst service is excellent, but clearly excellence has not yet been re-captured from the good old smaller days. Let’s hope so.
Dear me ….. so there is a problem with the rotation of images … thanks for flagging it up (NOT) .. uploaded 300 images from a wedding on Saturday .. can’t rotate any of them ….. e-mailed the PRO service mail address (yes folks, PRO users have a 2 hour return reply service … NOT) and my query about this had to be RESENT on Tuesday afternoon after originally being sent on SUNDAY night …..
NOT GOOD ENOUGH, Not good enough by far, whether for general customers, and certaily not Pro customers whose reputations and service are their lifeblood. I got screwed … AGAIN
Just had (ANOTHER) e-mail from a potential customer… “My neck is hurting from having to turn it to see your very good photographs. However, I have become very tired and annoyed, however good your photographs from the wedding, and will not be ordering from you.”
cheers Photobox … after 5 years excellent service, you have had 2 or 3 chances recently to save yourself, but it’s still going horribly wrong - and you’re now screwing my business as well as your own.
It’s all very well saying that most of your price increases are only 5% - this is a reasonable amount and to be expected under the circumstances. However, the product I use (Std. size greetings cards - A5) have gone up a whopping 20% - hardly reasonable at all. I haven’t got round to comparing the rest of the previous prices with the increased ones but I suspect the A5 greetings cards are not the only product that has seen a large increase.
This new website just keeps getting worse instead of better, everytime I use it these days its still slow as hell and I find a new problem
Todays problem is that I have an album with 1046 pictures in it, I want to print them all in 4 x 6 gloss which should be a simple enough task you would have thought. So I add them all to my shopping basket, it says adding 1046 items to my basket, and then initially says 1046 items in my basket once I have waited for it to add them …. but once I go to the chekout it says 1049 items in my basket, so wheres the 3 extra items coming from ?
3 Times I have emptied my basket and added the prints again to try and clear whatever extra things it is adding but all 3 times I get 1049 items in my basket so I have given up and ordered 1049 items even though I dont know what the extra 3 prints are.
Still soooooo whenever I am placing an order for a large amount of prints or just viewing an album.
Whilst I appreciate that price increases are inevitable at some time or other the fact that this seems to be in tandem with customer service getting worse and worse is far from impressive.
I waited almost a month for two photobooks that were supposed to be delivered in 3 days. I contacted customer services who were less than helpful.
Order placed 24th July and I was charged for next day delivery.
29th July told that it was in final production stage
5th August told again it had reached final production stage
6th August “should be dispatched soon but am unable to give a date”
8th August “It’s still at the same point”
13th August “Should be with you tomorrow or the next day”
It finally arrived on the 15th August.
Now I have ordered 3 more photobooks. Status one week later? Still printing! So much for next day delivery again!
I was looking into the photo books, but find them considerably more expensive than a similar product from another company. For example, the large size book, for 40 pages costs around £35, the similar product from photobox is £40, but that’s only for 26 pages. To have 40 pages, I would need to add another 14 pages which would cost nearly another £26! So we are talking £66 compared with £35! Even Yophoto, make PB look expensive. So whilst I have been a long serving customer with PB, I can’t ever see me trying their photo books, especially after some of the delays and horror stories quoted here.
Whilst it’s nice for people to air their views and comments here, does PB ever comment, or does it prefer to bury it’s head in the sand?
So, no more volume discounts for photo greeting cards! Thanks for the advance warning - huh! Loaded 13 photos and intended to order 15 cards of each (i.e. 195 cards) but instead of the discounted price of £1 (for orders above 90 cards) the price came up as £487.50p (was expecting £195).
Fat chance I’m now going to place an order - try telling me £195 to £487.50p is a 5% increase and I’ll ……. best left unsaid.
Busy looking for an alternative source of supply!