trust issue

[Tri-Win]

Wow they should have contacted you as soon as they knew they were going to be delayed. I hope you get your mailing out in time, best of luck

[Blessed]

Ugh - sorry to hear about your mailing disaster. I know first hand how bad a late mailing can hurt an event. Someone else suggested it and I'm going to second that suggestion - find a local mail house to handle the mailing. You will be glad you did!

My client who does a lot of mailing always has her postcards printed by one of the big online printers, delivered to the local mailhouse and the distribution handled from there. She doesn't use VistaPrint and we have always been happy with the quality and turn-around we've gotten from the other place. I'd love to get her to have her full-color 9"x6" postcards printed locally as well - but none of the local printers can even come close to touching the price we get online.

[greenoak]

thanks jenn....luckily we have always done it all in house in the past....... so we did get all 3500 printed and mailed in a mad scramble in about a day and a half after we found out ...... and most got their cards the wed or thurs before the big weekend.
in future we might have someone else print but i wouldnt ok anyone else mailing them for us........it was horrible..and they didnt even notify us.....even tho they took all the blame......i got good reports on them from several places too...

[Spider]

Was there something time sensitive on the postcards - I mean, is there any reason they could not have been printed way ahead of time? You know Christmas is coming. It comes at the same time every year. Your events happen regularly, too. You can print Christmas cards now for several years ahead - can you not print the cards for your 2011 pre-Christmas event now?

That way, you get the event postcards weeks (months) ahead so you know there will be no delay in the printing, then all you have to worry about is the mailing? I don't see why this problem had to occur.

[greenoak]

it was totally time sensitive...we wanted them mailed within a certain 3 days...they offer this service.... .but we didnt contract them to just do the printing... we wanted them to do all the work. not just the printing.... .we didnt miss any of their deadlines or anything like that...it wasnt a last minute rush job.....but it w asnt set up as a printing job and then a mailing job....it w as the whole job.... ... they just dropped the ball and didnt tell us....
we could easily do what you described..... if we want to do the stamping and mailing.we were trying to get out of that.......it is a long boring job...we will do that part ourselves next time.....

[Spider]

No, I think you can take your pre-printed postcards to a mailing house and have them auto-stamped, bulk packaged and carried to the post office. Perhaps you could arrange to carry them to the post office yourselves, so early stamping can be done and you have complete control of when you carry them to the post office.

[greenoak]

we dont have a mail center.... and now i dont want to outsource it...
and our mailing goes to probably 3 or 400 different zip codes which is also an issue....

[Blessed]

I think you would be very pleased with a good mail house - it's just a matter of doing a bit of research and finding someone who does that type of work in your area. They handle all the grunt work, have no issue with sorting all those zip codes and can probably save you some money and quite a bit of time. Don't give up on the idea because of this one bad experience - just do a bit more homework (or find a marketing person to do it for you) and go from there!

[greenoak]

not interested really.... we can do it , we always have..we have a lot of workers and it can be done at the counter....but usually dh and i end up doing it in a few nights.... the next event, the yardsale, is really huge....im not taking any chances on a new deal on that one....
i will probably look for another place to make the cards tho.... ours are matt and the vista print ones were shiney and better looking i guess...i wont be using vista print tho!!!