It's all free I tell you...But only for me!

Vistaprint have been in touch again.  They like to stay in touch; in fact they contact me every day pretty much.  Everything is free at Vistaprint (and the sun always shines one presumes).  Then they send me exclusive offers and special deals (you won’t get them, no siree, they’re just for me – oh you have!?) – and they’re currently having a “Mega Sale”.  Thing is that everything is free – so how do you reduce your prices from free?  How do you improve on free from a customer perspective?! 

Here comes an analogy...Now I won’t need to tell you how annoying ‘booking fees’ are on concert tickets.  They tell you a ticket is, say, £20 but actually it costs £22.50 to get one – outrageous.  Now imagine that concerts are ‘free’ but you have no idea how much the ‘booking fee’ is until right at the end of the transaction.  Now imagine that you have to design your own concert tickets and upload logos and whatnot and basically do the artwork.  If you can be bothered you work through the process - to find that your free ticket costs about £22.50. 

 

That ladies and gentlemen is Vistaprint!  Oh, and they do free delivery on orders of over £10!  If only everything wasn’t free I might get my order up to a tenner.  I wonder when they tell you how much the free postage is going to cost you?

Autobot Unmoved...

I replied briefly to the email advert from Vistaprint. In response to their invitation to "Make your own home stationary" I replied "My home is already stationary thanks" and signed it.

I was rather hoping for a confused reply - but of course they only send out emails and don't reply to them as is the modern way. Actually, I did get a reply from their 'autoresponder' suggesting I call customer services. I am tempted, but I have fluff to pick out of my navel - I nearly put 'naval' for a joke. I found a Youtube clip on 'Naval piercing'. Gawd preserve us.

I'm paranoid now that I sound like Mister Cleverclogs the spelling nerd. I return to my original point though that a stationery company should be able to spell the word stationery...

You gotta love 'em

Remember Vistaprint? The stationery company. They make stationery. And sell stationery. To people who want stationery...

Their latest email advert suggests in very large letters that I, and I quote...

"Make your Own Home Stationary"

I'm not moved by this latest advert - geddit!? And I hope my home is already stationary thank you! - Geddit again?!

Seriously though, if I sold cars I'd learn how to spell 'car'. If I made furniture I'd learn how to spell 'furniture'. If I made stationery...I could carry on but you get the point...

Unless they're selling house glue to glue houses to the ground? In which case I apologise.

Let me take you down...

Here's a current pricelist / advert I received from Vistaprint...

Photo Mug Now FREE Invitations Now FREE
Business Cards Now FREE Postcards Now FREE
T-Shirt Now FREE Return Address Labels Now FREE
Premium Banner Now FREE Stickers Now FREE
Photo Notebook Now FREE Letterhead Now FREE
Spiral Photo Book Now FREE FREE Cotton Bag Order NOW
Note Cards Now FREE Personal Website FREE Trial
Thank You Cards Now FREE Small Rubber Stamp Now FREE
FREE Keyring Order NOW FREE Mouse Pad Order NOW

So everything is free then! What can I actually have for nothing? - why nothing of course! When do you find out how much 'free' costs? - Why, when you're at the end of your order of course!

Modern business methods eh? Where nothing is real!

Free is expensive! - And annoying

It is true about Vistaprint

I have been naive. I previously blogged about Vistaprint. I was surprised that something advertised as 'free' wasn't actually free at all.

I should have known - Everything Vistaprint seem to sell is actually free. It's not that you don't hand over money to them, it's just that it's not for their products. The products are free.

I think I might open a shop and run it like this - in the window I'll put up a sign that says 'free Mars bars'. I'll then add a shop administration charge of 60p for each Mars bar I sell. I think it's called an 'innovative business model'. Either that or 'a con'.

99p calendar? That'll be £10.87 sir!

Now here’s a nice Christmas pressie idea for yer old Mum...A Vistaprint photo calendar on special offer. Upload your photos – 99p. That sounds OK doesn’t it? I guess they’ll send me spam and try to sell me stuff in future but that’s OK, that’s the deal. I might even have a look at what else they do and they might well make me a regular customer for loads of stuff. They might not, of course, but I’m presuming they’re taking this risk hoping it’ll work out for them - or having done lots of number crunching and market research. I got the info on a leaflet. And that’s all fine. What used to be known as a loss leader I believe...

However, it might be worth mentioning that the cheapest you can actually get one of these 99p calendars is by paying £4.89. That'll be £3.08 postage for a start...If you want it within 21 days that is of course. Plus some tax that they don't seem to have previously mentioned. If you want it within 7 days that’ll be £10.87 altogether. If I've worked it out correctly...which I may well not have as they want over 8 quid postage for that...

Incidentally, they add VAT to the total - including the postage. Now I may be wrong here but I thought they weren’t allowed to add VAT to postage. That’ll be why it’s called ‘shipping and processing’. My guess this is what stops them being prosecuted for breaking the law.

So that’s another company I don’t like then!

Thing is Vistaprint, if you have something I want I’ll pay for it. I like special offers and I understand that what you really want is more of my money – but don't tell me something costs 99p when it costs nearly 5 times that at a minimum. I might end up telling people you're a lying bunch of twats...

Now then, where can I buy gig tickets for the amount marked on the ticket?...