I think, it’s common in EVERY civilized country, that undeliverable post is being returned to the sender. When contacting support, they plainly told me: Nothing is returned to us! After half an hour, I had nailed him down to vaguely stating, that, if something was returned to them, one would settle for an agreement to deliver it again on additional shipping fees, which is fair enough. And that was the last time, I ever heared from them. No delivery, no notice, and 90 bucks down the drain.

After yet another hour on live chat, I finally got what I was promised to start with: a reissue, expedite send (see, they can do reissues, so what they said yesterday was a lie) and a refund. (Shown on my paypal but not yet on my credit card. I hope that will work out ok and the money will not disappear somewhere inbetween paypal and my bank account.)

Yet, the files are still offline. They still blame the layout of the book, and when I asked if that caused the drum mark spots too, said they do not wish to discuss with me anymore. Anyway, so if we still want the book, Sho - although she used LuLu’s template - will have to rework the files, they leave her no choice.

In the mean time, Mylena told me that a while ago she received a book with a wrongfully cut cover and a few days after that, without asking, a book with a correctly cut cover. I guess the files were to blame there too?

Should I inform anybody when the book is back up and really, nobody knows of some competition for LuLu with under-one-week-handling-of-complaints?

They say it is the layout of the book to blame, yet of all the people who have ordered, I am the only one with a ‘wrong’ copy. (Just heard of someone else who received the book recently and it was a good copy.)
They took down the book.
They deny having ever said that I would get a new copy and a refund. That’s not our policy. I quote: Mark B: I do apologize with how it came out but they will look at the images and inform the printing department to issue out another copy and also a refund
I told them to read their own chat logs. They say they can not give me a copy of the book anymore as the files are taken down: something they did.
They told me yesterday that they would hear with the boss and get back to me. Up to now, no reply from either that person or the orders department over at LuLu.

Shortly put: does anybody know of a service similar to LuLu’s on demand printing? It should mainly be able to deliver a photobook with some text. Ow, and have decent customer support.

Minus another 10 points for LuLu ondemand printing, which brings them to minus 30. (Forgot to count the minus then for screwing up my order earlier.)

Can say thats not nice finishing on the book. I work at a print company that makes photoalbums too.(we almost did the european part for Lulu)

And the spots r from the drum of the printer i think. I see them on other pics on ur flickr too. Same shape.

Hope u get a new one that actually been through a quality control. Thats crap they delivered.

Sorry to hear your copy is a bit mangled, can’t wait to see if ours is ok. Since it’s print on demand, printing flaws will show up on individual copies, not on groups of them. I’ve had similar problems with Lulu before, 2 copies of the same book ordered at the same time, one was perfect, one had a cutting flaw (it was cut nearly 1cm too narow, cropping some text!)

The way I figure it, as long as they replace it without making a fuss, then it’s allright… annoying, but allright. I DO think they should up the quality control though, but gut feeling tells me no one actually looks the books over before they’re packed and shipped. (and yes, packing is excellent, haven’t seen anything damaged in transit from them yet.)

Good luck on the test! *heads out for Work II*