Snapfish Mail for me

Broken marketing promises and a lack of customer service while ordering holiday cards turned me into a Grinch.

The above photo is a picture of the holiday card my fiancé Jack and I ordered this year. And while it conveys joy, love, and holiday excitement, the process of ordering these cards turned me into a real Scrooge.

It all started about two weeks ago when Jack and I decided to order our annual Christmas cards from Snapfish. We had designed and purchased our cards through Snapfish last year and had received them within about a week. Plus, the online photo printing company was having a 50%-off sale, so ordering our cards through the company this year seemed like a no brainer. We placed our order in the evening of Sunday, December 6.

We read that it could take up to five business days for our order to be processed, so I expected to see a tracking number for our order by Friday, December 11. But as I continued to check our order status throughout the week, I didn't see an update. And when I saw that our order still hadn't shipped by Monday, December 14, I began to feel anxious, especially considering that shipping could take an additional five days or more.

So, Jack and I tried to do what any customer would do in a situation like this—we tried to contact customer service. The brand's customer service information wasn't apparent on the site, and when we tried to click on a question mark icon, suggesting an FAQ section, we saw the following:

But that's not all. If you type “Snapfish customer service” into Google, you'll see three different pages turn up—two of which are from different websites (Snapfish's old website and Snapfish's new website). Plus, the company doesn't have a customer service phone number—a fun fact Jack and I learned after scouring both websites. The only way to contact Snapfish's customer service department was by email or online chat.

Jack tried sending an email, but didn't receive an answer, and we both tried using the chat option a few times. Each time we used it, we saw something like this.

Still, we would wait in line. But after watching the queue dwindle down to zero, we would be kicked out of line and be told that there wasn't an agent available to talk to us.

It felt like we weren't getting any answers. Snapfish hadn't provided any updates regarding the status of our order. So, I decided to do what many ignored customers do: throw a social media hissy fit. However, it appears that some customers beat me to the punch. We saw this message on the company's Facebook page.

We started to read a few of the more than 900 comments listed below the message. Many of them expressed the same frustration and customer abandonment that we felt.

We also revisited Snapfish's website where we saw a timetable listing when customers could expect to receive their cards, and which ones wouldn't receive their greetings in time for Christmas.

It was now December 15. And even with the expedited shipping that Snapfish promised, we weren't confident that we would receive our holiday cards in time—or at all. We considered ordering new cards from another company and returning our Snapfish cards once they arrived. However, we knew that getting in touch with the company was nearly impossible and the chances of us getting a refund highly unlikely.

Then, around midnight, a Christmas miracle happened: We received an email from Snapfish saying that our cards were ready to be shipped. I couldn't believe it. I immediately typed the tracking number into UPS's tracking system only to receive this message.

ARE YOU SERIOUS?!?! Jack spent the next day, December 16, calling UPS. He learned that our package was in Maryland, and that it would be in New York and on our doorstep the next day.