My Experience with Printerpix

If you have parents like mine who never seem to want anything other than "you getting good grades", you'll know that finding them gifts is always a struggle. However, two years ago, I saw a deal on Living Social (a site that offers deals or coupons which often allow you to buy a gift card for less than its value - ie. buy a $50 dollar gift card for a restaurant for only $10) for VistaPrint, a company that specializes in personalized printed items such as calendars, cups, mugs, shirts, etc. I ended up getting a calendar filled with family pictures for my parents and they absolutely loved it. Last year, I made a family book with pictures from our family trips all the way back in the 1990's when I was a kid and they loved that too. So this year, sticking with the whole family memories tradition, I decided to get another calendar for which I had seen a deal on Living Social from the company, Printerpix. Now I've always trusted that the sites Living Social offers deals to are legit and what not (trusted meaning I never even stopped to consider that the sites wouldn't be reputable because I always assumed like if Living Social is legit, their deals should be fine right?), but after some of the problems I had with Printerpix, I went online and on Yelp the company have an absolutely awful rating. However, I'm not going to completely bash Printerpix and I just want to give you my whole experience and honest opinion about them so hear me out if you will.

Knowing that Christmas time always gets busy, I decided to make the calendar ahead of time and placed my order on November 15th. I would have placed my order earlier but I had difficulties working with the calendar creating page and of course school got in the way. If I were to compare the online program/site to the one VistaPrint has for their calendars, I would definitely say VistaPrint is way better. The zoom function from Printerpix's program is super annoying and it often lags (no, this is not a problem with my computer!). Some of the positive things though are that it does have background designs for you to choose from, you can add in your own personal holidays (ie. birthdays) onto the calendar, there are stickers that you can add to decorate the calendar (though they can be a little tacky), and it lets you know if you picture quality isn't high enough to guarantee a clear image when printed. You can also upload pictures from multiple sources like Facebook, your computer, and other media sites. Once I completed my order, I received a confirmation email stating that my order had been received and that I would be sent another email with the tracking ID once it was shipped.

Now all that was done by November 15th. Fast forward to around the first week of December when I realize.. hm I still haven't gotten my calendar. I check my email - no email from them regarding shipment. I check the website - my order status says 0% .. what?! I call them and it takes a while to get through but finally I get connected with a customer service representative who informs me that my calendar has been shipped but the "website isn't updating for some reason" and gives me the tracking information. Now first off, if they know that the website isn't working, I think it would be nice if they sent out an email or at least informed their customers of this because it's quite concerning seeing that my order is at 0% when it's been almost over a month. Furthermore, I never received an email with the tracking information which I'm not sure if that's linked to the website issue or not but they DEFINITELY should let customers know then because then how are we supposed to know to expect our order and when to, right? Luckily for me, the customer representative that I was speaking to was very nice and helped me look up my tracking ID which they had sent via USPS and low and behold, for some reason it had arrived at location near/very close to my address but then somehow went off to the city next to it and then "departed the USPS facility" and just never was scanned again. So the Printerpix lady told me to contact the USPS to see if they could find out where it was and if they couldn't help me, to call back again and she would send me a new copy.

Getting a hold of the USPS was another long wait but I managed to talk to a customer service representative and he (supposedly) opened up a case for me to track my package and said someone would contact me within 48 hours but no one did so I contacted Printerpix again (by then it was the second week of December) and the person who I explained my situation too was great and helped send out a new order request for my calendar in no time. However, I forgot to ask them to change the shipping address because by the time it arrived, I would be back home for the holiday break and obviously wouldn't be able to give it to my parents then. Within a week (not sure why it took so long), I received an email with the tracking ID for my reprinted calendar and was able to track that over my winter holiday break at home. It arrived in about 5 business days (right on Christmas eve actually) but I wasn't able to retrieve it until January 4th when I came back to my college apartment. I was a bit displeased because I found my calendar shoved into our tiny apartment mailboxes when I expected it to be left outside our doorstep like most larger packages or in the office. The reason why it was even able to fit into the tiny 4" by 8" box was because the cardboard packaging was thin and flimsy and barely sturdier than the card-stock the calendar was made out of. I was super disappointed about this because after about 2 weeks of being shoved up in that tiny mailbox, my calendar was curled up almost permanently. Since then (so for about a week now), I have put my heavier textbooks/flat objects on top of it in hopes that it will flatten out with no permanent wrinkles or folds. I sent an email complaint to Printerpix and have yet to receive a response but am definitely upset and annoyed at the poor packaging. Although I may have paid for my calendar using a Living Social deal, the calendar normally costs $20 if I remember correctly (if not more) which completely does not justify such poor effort put into the packaging.

Regarding the calendar itself, I was also a little disappointed to find that it was double sided meaning that it goes to January to June I think and then you have to flip the calendar over and on the backside you go from July to December. I'm all for being eco friendly and all but something about that bothered me. I'm not sure if they list that in the calendar description on their webpage but I do feel just a little cheated/disappointed in the quality of the calendar. Nevertheless, one good aspect is that because it's a wall calendar (or at least the one I ordered), it comes with a hole at the top to pin it up and the wire that holds the pages together sort of bumps up in the middle so you could hang it on a pushpin/tack in the wall. I do wish they would give you the option of choosing a landscape or portrait calendar however because they only give you the portrait option for the wall calendar.

So overall my thoughts would be... no I do not recommend this company. I do appreciate the professional and friendly customer service because they did seem earnest in helping me out (as of late I've been having great experiences with customer service like with AT&T and the USPS, it's surprising but refreshing). The downsides are that I feel like this company has a lot of problems (on there webpage they have a specific link to direct you if you have complaints! Like if they actually have that.. I feel like they must get quite a lot of complaints) as my experience showed with their webpage, email miscommunication, shipping issues (though I suppose that might not be their fault, I don't feel like USPS is that reliable and would prefer another carrier), and also delay in email response. They say they'll get back to you within 24 hours but the multiple times I've emailed them, it has always taken more than 24 hours if not no response at all. At least I've gotten my calendar in the end, albeit after Christmas so I'll have to give it to my parents the next time I see them, but do be wary if you plan on purchasing any merchandise from this company. Let me know in the comments if you've had any experience with this company and if so, was it good or bad?!


Edit (2/26/15): I sent my complaint email about the condition I received my calendar in on January 5th. On January 27th, I received an apology from their customer service and an arrangement for another calendar to be sent to me. Now if this had been something more urgent or a present for someone other than my parents I definitely would have been a bit more upset at the super late response (3 weeks?! Really?!). But because I had managed to flatten out my calendar to a somewhat presentable state and given it to my parents, I wasn't too bothered. I would like to mention that even my mom thought the quality of the calendar was pretty bad in both the picture quality and just overall look/design/material. On February 16th, I received an email confirming the shipment of my order and received it on February 20th so at least I got the package in a decently timely manner. The packaging was still this pretty thin cardboard material but at least this time the mailman (or woman) left it on my doorstep and not crumpled up in the tiny PO boxes that apartment complexes have for normal mail (as it was for my first order).  I do appreciate PrinterPix shipping me another calendar and trying to make up for the poor condition I received my calendar in so points for that and I do think their customer service tries hard to make up for their companies faults, but I do not think that excuses the company for poor quality products.

Tech Tips with Tammy: Having all words in Google Chrome in italics?

I don't know when this started, but when I came back home from college one break, I noticed Google Chrome on the desktop computer had everything in italics. Or well to be specific, it wasn't everything but it was anything that was in the standard Arial font would be italicized. This included Google searches and was extremely bothersome and annoying. I read countless forums and help sites with others having similar issues (using the search phrase: "why is everything in google chrome in italics" (yes that simple haha!) but nothing I tried seemed to be working.

These two pictures I got from this forum though the advice it gave didn't actually help me. Notice how in the bottom page, everything is italicized? That's what my screen looked like.

I tried to follow this blog post, but that didn't work for me. I changed all my fonts to Times New Roman and that did nothing. I did notice that if I put the font on Arial, the preview would show the writing in italicized Arial font which told me there was definitely just something wrong with my Arial font. Nevertheless, that may not be the case for you so I am linking you to it in case this solution is the one for your problem.

The next webpage I looked at is a Google forum which lead me to this Microsoft page. It directs you to the download page for the European Union Expansion Font Update. However, the first few times I installed the font update, it said it was successfully downloaded, but when I restarted my computer to "let the changes update", there was still no change and everything was still in italics! What I finally did that worked was... I went to Control Panel, searched "Fonts" in the search bar, clicked on the Fonts folder and went to the Arial font folder. Inside the folder, there are various different types of Arial fonts like Arial Black, Arial Narrow, etc. I deleted the "Arial Regular" and then reinstalled the font update. When I restarted my computer, everything was back to normal! (And yes Arial Regular will be back in the Font folder so it's not like I got rid of it or anything that would mess up the font coding on the computer).

I'm pretty sure this works if you're having trouble with any font so if it's not Arial but another font that's giving you trouble, I would try and follow these same steps but go to that font's folder instead of the Arial folder. Let me know if this worked for you or what you did to fix this problem if you had another solution :)

Tech Tips with Tammy: Windows not recognizing your USB device/drive?

So this is going to be a totally different post compared to my usual beauty reviews and what not, but I felt the need to share this with anyone who might be feeling the same frustration I had this entire day regarding my laptop not recognizing my USB mouse cord when it had been for the last two years. I had unplugged my mouse to take my laptop to school and when I brought it back and plugged it in, my mouse just wouldn't move my cursor! My laptop recognized that the mouse was plugged in, but when I tried to move the mouse to control my cursor on my screen, nothing would happen. If you're reading this, I'm assuming you're having a similar or the same problem and I want to share how I managed to fix it because let me tell you, it was SUCH a relief after going through and trying countless methods that failed to fix the problem.

Since I'm sure not everyone has the exact same problem as me, I'm going to first outline and show a few screenshots of what it looked like when I tried to first figure out my mouses' problem.

The yellow sign with the exclamation point is what was next to my "OPTICAL MOUSE" icon (I took this screenshot after I fixed my mouse)

To make sure that my USB ports were actually working, I tried out multiple different USB devices other than my mouse which worked so I knew it wasn't my actual USB port. Then I tried using a different mouse and that still didn't work, so I went to my Control Panel and noticed a yellow warning/trouble sign next to my mouse icon (so yes my computer was recognizing that my mouse was plugged in which eliminated that as a potential problem--if that's your case, sorry my solution won't work for you!).

Upon right clicking on my mouse icon, I was given these options (yes this is for a printer but it was the same).

I clicked Troubleshoot and went through the series of steps that it prompted me to determine the problem. What my computer gave me was "Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware because a previous instance of the device driver is still in memory. (Code 38)". Being the total NOT tech-geek person that I am, I had no idea what that meant so of course, Google came to the rescue.

Searching up that exact problem gave me a number of forums with people having similar problems to myself but none of the given solutions seemed to work for me. I checked if my driver was out of date and that wasn't the problem because it was updated. Finally, I stumbled upon some forum (which I can't seem to find anymore and it's really frustrating me because it would be nice to show you guys that I'm not just making this up or something haha) where someone offered a link to the Microsoft support page that I'll link here.

The link will direct you to a page that looks like this.

If you read the page, it gives you a list of what the program does and you just click "run now". (I'm not sure if it's just me but the "run now" box looks a bit sketchy like one of those ads that you see and know to never click.. BUT I PROMISE YOU THIS ISN'T LIKE THAT haha!). I mean this is coming from the actual Microsoft support page so I'm pretty sure it's trustworthy. Anyways, I just followed the instructions on the program and it basically did everything for me and I think what it did was uninstall the driver and reinstall it and then I just had to restart my computer and.. *drumroll please* my mouse works!!! Wheeee, So yea it's pretty simple but I really just wanted to share that page/the program because I think it can fix a lot of problems you might be having with your drivers and devices and what not so hopefully, if you do have a problem and try this out, it works for you! Plus none of the forums I saw except that one that I can't find any more (Q.Q) linked me to this page so I'm not sure how many people know about it.

Let me know in the comments if this helps you out! :)