Last year I decided not to design our Christmas cards myself and instead leave it to one of the professional services out there. After weighing all of my options, I went with minted and had a really great experience.
This year I saw that they offered free recipient address printing. I looked all over the website and read the copy, and for whatever reason I walked away thinking they'd send the cards out on our behalf. I know other companies do this. So I uploaded our pics, wrote our copy, uploaded all of our recipient addresses, and paid them. I checked our order, never once realizing that they don't actually send them for you. They just print your addresses. Doh! I'm so angry at myself for making this mistake, but it could have turned out okay ... if they had arrived here the day they were supposed to arrive. I kept checking my order and at first they were set to be delivered on 12/10. Then on 12/12. Today the site changed to 12/17. We'll be gone by then. If they were to have arrived on 12/10 - today - like they were supposed to I could have gotten stamps and dumped them at the post office. It would have been annoying (since the whole point was to avoid that mad house), but completely rectifiable. Now? Not so much.
Aside from this unfortunate turn of events (and I completely admit my culpability in the situation - please know that) being completely asstastic, the customer service I experienced was less than stellar. I chose to use Live Chat because I think it's a really awesome customer service feature, and I've found that I can often solve problems much easier than if I call and talk to someone. I don't know why, maybe I'm just a really confusion verbal communicator. Anyhow, my first CSR couldn't understand my question. I had to keep phrasing it differently until she finally understood. She asked for my order number and then said, "one moment please." I waited 10 minutes and then got a "Tessa has ended your session" message.
Then I started another chat with Revlon. Yes. Someone named their child Revlon. Anyhow, after several minutes I decided to try to cancel my order. Only, she told me I couldn't because my order has shipped. She gave me a FedEx tracking number. According to FedEx this tracking number doesn't exist. But she swears my order has been shipped. I think they consider "shipped" meaning it's sitting in an out box somewhere, out of sight, out of mind, but not actually in the postal system. Which would explain the increased delivery date delay.
So now, I'm right back in the situation I didn't want to be in - designing, printing, and compiling our Christmas cards. Because, you know, I have a ton of time to do that. Alan told me to not do cards this year. I can't. I love Christmas cards. Getting Christmas cards from our friends and family is one of my highlights of the holiday season. I love going to the mailbox and seeing who sent what. It might sound silly, but I really, really love that tradition. So yeah, I'm going to suck it up and do our own. This is going to be a huge DIY adventure in that I'm going to try to use items I already have on hand. I think I'll have to buy envelopes, but it is what it is. Wish me luck.
