I have been a Snapfish customer for several years - I order calendars from them as Christmas gifts for my family. They periodically send me emails offering discounts, usually for either free shipping or a percent off my order. This year, as usual, I ordered calendars in December. On Dec 26th, they sent me an email that said: Our biggest sale of the year is here Enjoy up to 40% off all your favorite photo gifts like cards, books, and calendars. And turn your fun holiday memories into treasured keepsakes. Just use coupon WINTER40 at checkout by January 15.* So this morning, being the 15th, I decided to go ahead and order one more calendar. Only, having created the calendar (takes a little time to upload photos and arrange them, as well as add in personal dates), I got to the checkout, entered the code and got a message that the code is not valid on this order.
So I contacted live chat. They said that due to "technical difficulties", that coupon would not work and offered me another coupon for 35% off. Huh? First you offer me 40%, then tell me since that's not working you'll offer me 35% instead? I was polite but told him this was false advertising, which is illegal, and after a very long pause (presumably he was off talking to managers about the nutcase on live chat
) he came back and said that if I placed the order using the 35% coupon, he would manually credit me for the additional 5%. So I did.
Skip forward 30 minutes and I get the confirmation email about the credit, but the figure didn't look right. So I pull out the calculator and....it doesn't add up to 5%. So I do one more calculation and figure he credited me for 5% of the amount AFTER the original credit. Now for those of you who are not good at math, if you take 35% of a figure and then take 5% of that, you do NOT get 40% of the total. My total discount therefore, amounted to only 38%.
I know, I know, I'm spending way too much time on this but by now they've made me mad. So I go back to live chat where a different agent argues that "Please note that the discount is calculated on the Subtotal of your order." I explained politely that doing so does not add up to 40% of the original price but he held his ground. In the end I told him that the only reason I placed the order was because of the 40% offer, and if they were not going to honor that offer, he could just go ahead and cancel the whole order and refund everything I'd paid. His next response was that he would credit me the remainder. Since I started typing this, I've received a second email confirming the second credit.
All told, I've spent about an hour just dealing with customer service and trying to get them to honor an offer they emailed to me. And an hour of my time is not worth the money I "saved" on this calendar. So I just wanted to issue a warning to you: check amounts carefully. I like their products but don't like their business practices. I believe I'll be looking elsewhere to make my calendars next year.
So I contacted live chat. They said that due to "technical difficulties", that coupon would not work and offered me another coupon for 35% off. Huh? First you offer me 40%, then tell me since that's not working you'll offer me 35% instead? I was polite but told him this was false advertising, which is illegal, and after a very long pause (presumably he was off talking to managers about the nutcase on live chat
Skip forward 30 minutes and I get the confirmation email about the credit, but the figure didn't look right. So I pull out the calculator and....it doesn't add up to 5%. So I do one more calculation and figure he credited me for 5% of the amount AFTER the original credit. Now for those of you who are not good at math, if you take 35% of a figure and then take 5% of that, you do NOT get 40% of the total. My total discount therefore, amounted to only 38%.
I know, I know, I'm spending way too much time on this but by now they've made me mad. So I go back to live chat where a different agent argues that "Please note that the discount is calculated on the Subtotal of your order." I explained politely that doing so does not add up to 40% of the original price but he held his ground. In the end I told him that the only reason I placed the order was because of the 40% offer, and if they were not going to honor that offer, he could just go ahead and cancel the whole order and refund everything I'd paid. His next response was that he would credit me the remainder. Since I started typing this, I've received a second email confirming the second credit.
All told, I've spent about an hour just dealing with customer service and trying to get them to honor an offer they emailed to me. And an hour of my time is not worth the money I "saved" on this calendar. So I just wanted to issue a warning to you: check amounts carefully. I like their products but don't like their business practices. I believe I'll be looking elsewhere to make my calendars next year.
