I agree with Trixie on most of what she says.
I'm a big fan of gotprint.com and have used them for 8+ years, but they didn't make the greeting card size I needed, so I went with Smartpress. I'm used to what gotprint offers... gang printing, minimum customer service, figure-it-out-yourself templates, upload it yourself, online digital proofs, pretty good pricing and fairly good quality for what you pay. Smartpress is definitely in the same family with what gotprint offers.
I've ordered roughly 8000 of the same layout greeting cards in a total of 5 orders with smartpress. They offer lots of different paper options. The ordering process is easy, straightforward and I really like their website. They ship very quickly, too.
The first order of 6000 cards looked great, but some had issues. A large bunch of my cards were cut using a dull blade which tore through the cards giving them rough, jagged edges. There were also a few cards here and there that had ink blobs and other assorted damage. I had 6000 cards to look through, so it took me quite a while to get back to Smartpress with an estimate of how many damaged cards I had. I came back with a pretty big number, somewhere in the ballpark of 900 cards needed to be redone. I even sent them pictures of all the damage, too. Even though they acknowledged that the "owner did not maintain some of the equipment properly", they wanted me to send the damaged cards back on my dime. After 20 minutes of arguing, I was able to bypass that step, but it was very unpleasant.
Other issues in orders, as Trixie says, are a surprise every single time:
-Shrink wrap was free on my first order, but became an upcharge later on. If you don't pay $5 to shrink wrap, your cards roll around in the box and get dented. Shrink wrapping seems like it should be included since it protects the cards more than it's just a "convenience".
-Scoring. Two orders had huge scoring issues. I'm making folded greeting cards, so after they are folded you'd like them to fold in half, evenly. Which is the norm, you hope. 20% of the cards in some of my orders were off by 1/16", another 10% off by 1/8". About 5% of the cards were off by 3/16", which is a pretty significant. They'd get worse as you get into a stack of cards, leaving me to believe that it's an equipment calibration issue.
-Centering. I've had a few bunches of cards come back way off center. I was told by customer service that they think being off center by 1/8" or under is "acceptable". So, if you are into perfect centering with perfect scoring and your designs have zero "wiggle room", you may want to pay the extra money to go into a different printer.
-Color. In my most current order, 1/3 of the cards were too red. This is a first. Normally I really like the color.
I just put in a claim yesterday for some issues I had with my latest order. Fingers crossed I don't have to argue with anyone about their equipment and butt heads with customer service again.
So... my conclusion is this... I'll give them a few more orders and if the issues get worse, I'll look somewhere else. If they continue to honor their 100% guarantee and start maintaining their equipment, they'll have me as a customer for a long time.
**update 10/10/12 - just added a star to my Yelp rating because my recent damage claim was honored and I was issued a refund immediately. Lisa was courteous, kind and very helpful. Very impressed! read more