Saturday, November 20, 2010

My Moo Card Experience (and Review)

For the past few months, I'd been searching for a good place that can print high quality business cards. I'm not talking about the 10,000 cards for $2 places that just pump them out and don't care about quality... I'm talking quality, feel, etc.

Then one day during the summer, my good friend Clint Davis - and the twin of my favorite TV character, Dexter - posted about Moo Cards on his blog.

I'd heard about Moo Cards and I'd even seen some samples, but being so A.D.D sometimes, I just didn't think of it at first to look them up. Perfect, Moo was the way to go for me... or was it?

The biggest advantage with Moo is that you can put up to 50 different pictures on the back of your cards, high quality and all. So not only are cards going to give your info to your potential clients, you can also have it act as a partial portfolio for yourself. Brilliant! I sifted through my work for the last 2 years and picked some of the best pictures I had taken at weddings and engagement sessions. All in all, I ended up with 39 total pictures. Here are some of the examples of what I picked...

Moo Cards-115

Now it was time to do the front side of the card.

On Moo's site, it recommends you to use the following dimensions with 300dpi resolutions.

Moo Recommendations

Not so hard to create it, right? I go into Photoshop, create a very simple 300dpi JPEG with my logo and basic info for the front of the cards at the recommended dimensions. I then uploaded the pictures and waited anxiously for my cards.

In about a week, I received my first batch of cards. I was so excited, I ripped the package to pieces like a 3 year old on christmas morning and took the cards out for a glance at the quality.

Imagine my disappointment when I saw their awesome packaging, awesome picture quality, with an absolutely ruined front side of the card. The quality was so bad, it looked like my name and logo had been smeared all over the card... on EVERY card.

Moo Cards-102

So I emailed Moo that weekend and received an apology email back from them with an attempt to correct the problem. Mad or not, I have to say as a customer, I appreciate that. They also told me that "usually" a 300dpi JPEG shouldn't have any issues, but just in case, send them a Vectored PDF to ensure correction of the bleeding issue around the letters.

Not having access to a program that does anything in a Vector format, I emailed Clint (a.k.a Dexter). He was gracious enough to not only redo the front side of the card for me, but also fix a small part of my logo that was bugging me. The "S" in Sassani looked a little choppy in my logo, so he cleaned it up (His doing is on the right).

Moo Cards-106

So now, I sent the Vectored PDF to Moo and expected the new batch to be a-ok, and here's what I got...

Moo Cards-107

The SAME thing... reprinted. Although they weren't as bad as the first batch, they still weren't right and I was quite pissed. So I emailed Moo AGAIN and told them the same JPEG file was printed instead of vectored PDF they had requested. So now, I have 400 cards that are nearly useless.

Moo Cards-101

Moo apologized again and asked for the PDF file to reprint the cards yet again. Being a little hesitant, I went ahead and sent the PDF file and waited.

After another week or so (its been nearly a month since my initial order), I received my 3rd set of cards. This time, as they said, the PDF worked like a charm. The batch is perfect and Clint is my savior. Thanks Clint!

Moo Cards-108

So now I'm left with a dilemma. Now that I know what issue was and its been fixed, do I use them again, or do I start searching for another place? Honestly, that question is easy for me to answer. Yes, I'll use them again... and here's why:

Throughout the whole process, they attempted to fix their mistake. They were gracious enough to print me new cards and even though they had a hiccup with the second batch, they printed the cards until the issue was corrected. The quality and thickness of the cards is awesome, and the pictures look oh so sexy on the backside. Now that the front side is also fixed, these are what I would say are the perfect cards for anyone with a visual portfolio and I would recommend them to anyone.

So if you're looking for business cards and you like great quality, give Moo Cards a chance and know that they stand behind their product 100%. I'm quite happy with my cards and I'll be reordering once I run out of them... and this time, with the correct Vector PDF file the awesome Clint Davis designed for me.

2 comments:

Clint Davis said...

Glad i could help! The customer service and attention to detail Moo delivers is 2nd to none.

Unknown said...

I loved this article, I'm do for some new business cards, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to get MOO cards... your blog post has now got me inspired!

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