Saturday, August 04, 2007

Kinko's: Full of Kinks

Yesterday I was helping my friend, Kate with her wedding programs. We did the design, proofed the file and headed to our neighborhood Kinko's to get them printed. Seems like a fairly normal thing to do, yes? It was a debacle.

When we arrived, we asked the staff to print the programs, fold and staple them together. Something we thought Kinko's did for customers. Instead of doing so, they directed us to the computer stations to print our own programs indicating that they would fold and staple them once we were finished with the printing.

We then asked where we might print the program from Publisher. They directed us to a computer. Kate inserted her credit card and was being charged online time, only to discover that Publisher was not available on this particular system. We mentioned this and the staff informed us that Publisher was not on that computer. Very helpful.

Once we figured out the computer stuff (there is much more to the story at this point, but I'm skipping ahead to save time), we indicated that we wanted them printed digitally (not copies of the original copy). They informed us that it would be around $2.00/each, but that the machine they would use to do so was broken. After over an hour in the store, we left without any programs.

We left. We went to Xpedx and purchased paper and then headed to the UPS Store and opened the file. They printed the programs on our paper, double-sided, folded and stapled (the machine did all of the work!). It took a little over 30 minutes. They charged us $0.16/each. We saved over $300. Remarkable.

1 comment:

Andy McCullough said...

Even with Kinko's Crusade discount that's an amazing savings! My own experience with Kinkos has been hit or miss. The Louisville one is not bad but after two bad experiences at the Westminster one I called Kinko's and complained. Might be good to let them know.