Zazzle = Epic Fail

On September 25th, I placed an order for a single greeting card for a good friend of mine. I went to Zazzle.com because they were the only place that had the kind of card I was looking for. Pleased with what I found, I ordered the card, gave the address of my friend and figured it wouldn’t take all that long to reach them.

Boy, was I wrong.

Remember, this is a single solitary greeting card. You know, the ones you find in a CVS or something. Nothing special aside from the type of card. That’s it.

Today is October 3rd and according to Zazzle, my order is still “processing.” By processing, I’m assuming they’re letting me know that they’re in the process of selecting a particular specimen of giant redwood tree in northern California and will then lovingly knock said tree down, accompany it to the pulp mill and watch as it turned into the finest greeting card paper stock one can find anywhere on the planet. Once that’s done, they will no doubt use the ink from a rare octopus indigenous to the warm tropical waters of the Solomon Islands to write the greeting card’s saying on it and print my personal message. Once that is complete, they will no doubt use palm fronds to dry that exquisite ink. And then finally, they will mail it out.

I mean, that’s about the only thing I can imagine they’re doing since it’s been over a week and the order is stuck in never-never land.

I’ve emailed them twice and finally got a response. Their response said: “We’ve upgraded the shipping on your order to the fastest available method, and we’re working with our production liaison to ensure that your order gets produced and sent out to you quickly. Thank you for your continued patience!”

Awesome. They’ve upgraded the shipping. They apparently didn’t try to find out exactly why it has taken eight days to produce a single greeting card. As of right now, that card is still stuck in “processing” hell.

I wrote back, of course, asking why it took eight days to create a card. I haven’t gotten a response yet.

I can only imagine how bad the service must be for other things or larger orders. I used Zazzle in the past and found them to be decent. But this experience has left me completely unimpressed with their systems and their operation as a whole. If you can’t make a greeting card inside of a day or two, then you shouldn’t offer the things in the first place.

My advice: get your custom greeting cards done elsewhere.

UPDATE: After tweeting this post, Zazzle contacted me in response to my question. They said: “It appears the card did not pass quality assurance. We will be shipping the card with express shipping.” Quality assurance? It’s a greeting card. Bizarre. Obviously there was a serious breakdown somewhere in the chain. I still have no idea when the card will be actually done “processing.”