SLart at the Cannery book : possible printing flaws!
November 25, 2007 12:50 am
The SLart at the Cannery book I ordered from Lulu had some printing flaws in it, whitespace on top missing, upper part of some of the photographs missing and ugly red stripes on a few the pages. If you have received an order like that and thought it was supposed to be that way, well it’s not! (Just to be sure, I compared mine with Shoshana’s. ;))
So if this is the case, I suggest you contact Lulu at orders@lulu.com and ask them for what they promised me on help chat:
- a reissue of the book
- expedite send
- a refund
My letter to Lulu:
Dear Lulu staff,
I was so happy when finally receiving my copy of SLart at the Cannery. I almost kissed the mailman - I would have, had I been home when he delivered it - for being as nice as to bring me a copy of pure and utter joy.
I quickly opened the steady, good wrapping that made the book travel safely to me. I held it carefully, making sure not to leave greasy finger marks behind on the shiny, appealing cover.
My feelings of luck were enormously… until I came to page six to find that the - Second Life, but still - photograph featured there had a bleed edge. Wow? Wait! That was not what we planned!!! There was suppose to be white space above that one there.
I quickly started browsing the book, trembling with fear to find other defaults, and not being able to focus attention on the beautiful pictures inside because of my concerns about this strange error.
And there the were… on page 9, 13, 14, 15, 17, 30, 33, 36, 39, 44, 55, 47, 48, 49, … photographs where part of the photograph and/or frame were missing and with no whitespace surrounding them on top.
My nightmare got even worse when I discovered red stripes on some of the pages, looking like a kid had used red crayon to decorate my precious book.
Really, I love the print on demand principle, but obviously what I demanded was not printed.
I spoke to Mark B on chat support and he told me to photograph all the errors and mail them to you, so you would inform the printing department to issue out another copy and also get me a refund. Furthermore, seeing this was ordered on the 8th of November and we are now the 25th and all I have is a book with printing flaws, I suggest you consider to expedite it.
I think photographing 5 out of 24 errors on cutting/whitespace above the picture and 2 out of 5 ugly red spots will be enough proof?
As I was not sure of the quality needed for the photography proof and whether you accept large email attachments, you can find the photographs here.
Ann Wuyts / Vint Falken
21 Responses to “SLart at the Cannery book : possible printing flaws!”
I didn’t get myself an copy of this book, tho it’s nice to see they do get realised.
I hope you get a copy soon with a proper layout Vint!
*H*
First reply:
Thank you for contacting us!
We have received your inquiry and are assigning it to a representative. You can expect to receive a response from us within one to two business days. Blablabla…
One to two business days? I don’t like the idea of two business days. Minus 10 points for Lulu. (They can gain 9 back if they answer me in one business day.)
lmfao, Vint… “kid with crayons stuck in printing press?”
I’ll wait until they’ve ironed out the bugs before I order my copy. A friend of mine used Lulu to publish his book (all text) and they made a perfect job of it…
I hope they get this one right too as I think this is a great idea!!
What the…. Stupid people! Though once they fix it i’ll order a copy myself… I’ll soon get 35$ out of my Therebucks sale, I hope it’ll be enough (Boy, that sounds like i’m an 8 year old with 35$ from his mommy! ‘^_^)…
Aww, looking at the page, it’s 46$ not including shipping! I guess i’ll use my debit card when it arrives :-S
Tenshi: ah well, we worked some ‘old’ printing presses (read +-15 years old? offset if I remember correctly) at school for ‘getting to know what you’ll get to deal with’, and yes, it’s possible to get stuck inbetween. Although I never saw that happen. I think with the new digital on-demand ones it’s impossible, but attempting to be funny beats calling the people at support department retards? =d
Amanda, Sho’s came out correctly and she ordered before me. So I think it really was a printing (or probably cutting?) flaw. But just want to make sure that nobody got the book this way and though it was supposed to look this bad/ugly. I was honest about the shiny cover and that it was well packaged for sending. :D (So, do buy it! ;))
No submissions from your part for the A Different Light at the Cannery show?
Smiley, if I indeed get a new book AND the refund, I’ll add to that 35$ enough so you can buy it. (Ow, are you sure you parents will be OK with you buying the book? There are two or three images in there my mom would still be shocked about knowing I had them in my bookshelve. On the other hand, she was already shocked about a Taschen catalogue with some pictures of Terry Richardson, so she labeled a Taschen catalogue which also includes paintings from Monet etc as ‘pr0n’.)
Yeah, I noticed there are M-rated photos in there, especially from Mel and Collin! Dirty couple! (just kidding, haha) I’ll skip it? ‘^_^
P.S.: If you saw my “announcement” about ConQuest, this reminded me of looking for a service to publish it when I finish writing and sending week-by-week to a book, and LuLu looks just right!
Vint: How long have I got for submissions? I do have a couple of ideas, so just need to know how long I have…
Amanda, it reads Art submissions will be accepted through November 28th. ;)
Smiley, I just read the post. Will the story have a neko heroin? ;)
I have yet to even start it, so, i’ll consider a “little Vint” in the story… ;-) But now, I gotta study for a test that’s due tomorrow! Cya!
Ow!!! Me when I was still young? *grins*
Good luck on the test! *heads out for Work II*
(Meant as in a little part of you in it, but that’s good too! ;-) )
Hey Vint,
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.)
Heya Vint,
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.
Of course that’s why they have galley proofs etc. Personally, being a zero attention to detail person I was never very good at that.
The two business days have passed. Haven’t heard from orders@ yet. Live help says they can not help me. Funny thing is that they did say they marked it as urgent. So I wonder, do the non-urgent things get handled first, or do those take 10 business days to respond to?
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.)
-68844 points for LULU now
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.
Yet another update:
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?
[…] book from the previous show is back up on LuLu - without us changing files, so they did admit their mistake in […]
Care to comment?