Vista Print free business cards tested
I occasionally think it would be fun to have “business” cards that are just for fun, but I don’t usually want to pay a lot. I recently saw a VistaPrint ad for 250 free business cards (affiliate link), so I thought I’d check it out. It’s not quite “free” in the end because you pay shipping and handling, but you don’t get gouged. I haven’t seen the cards yet, but The cards look quite nice actually (see the “Update” section at the end) and for $6 it’s a fun thing to do, with a couple of things to watch out for.
When I passed my doctoral exams, I made up cards that said:
Tom Lambert
Dissertator. Slacker.
Appointments by request
This time I wasn’t doing something quite that flippant. These cards are for my position has “Hiker in Chief” at Yosemite Explorer, so I didn’t care about a unique, custom, professional product. I was fine with the 30 or so free business card templates they offer. At every step, though, you’re tempted to upgrade: more templates, custom fonts, no Vistaprint.com URL on the back ($3.99 extra). Then of course you get offered all sorts of complementary, but not complimentary, products: address labels, letterhead, pens and so on. Then when you’re all done and you’ve kept your exuberance in check and resisted ponying up for that killer premium font, you do have to pony up $5.68 for shipping and handling. That’s not really free, but it’s awfully cheap for 250 business cards.
Watch out for the $10 cash back offer.
I was also hit up for a special offer for $10 cash back. This was the only part of the process that bothered me. It sounds great: spend $5.68, give your email address and get $10.00 back. Net gain: $4.32 plus 250 business cards. Who can beat that? If you take a minute to read all the small boring text on the left instead of just the main offer box where they ask for your email, you realize that by giving your email at this stage, you are in fact authorizing a $14.95 per month charge on your credit card.. I thought all the other come-ons were more or less what I expected, very clear and up front about costs and easy to pass on, but this one struck me as deceptive.
I haven’t tried to free t-shirt offer, but apparently you can get one of those too. In general I’m kind of picky about my t-shirts and I like to design my own from scratch so I passed on this one. So anyway, click on the banners below and you’ll get 250 “free” business cards for $5.68 or a “free” t-shirt (true cost undetermined). Best of all (from my point of view anyway), if you use that banner, I’ll actually get a commission!
Update: Nice cards accompanied by email barrage
My cards arrived quickly. The quality was better than expected and people who see them are generally really impressed.
And once you order, the email barrage from VistaPrint begins. You can of course just unsubscribe, but if you don’t you’ll get an email just about every day from them with their latest specials and so forth. I wouldn’t exactly call it spam, but waaayyy beyond a reasonable quantity. But they’re basically an honorable company and will honor your unsubscribe. The thing is, I think they make a mistake by sending quite so much mail. If they sent an email every two weeks, I would not be annoyed and would be more likely to actually open the email before deleting it. I would think it would be a better strategy to send the occasional email with a special offer and maybe an occasional newsletter that I would select. Depending on my role in making business cards, for example, I might sign up for the graphic design newsletter, the marketing newsletter or the small business newsletter.
Tags: business cards, free
Tagged with: business cards • free
Filed under: Uncategorized
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Thanks, this was really helpful to know because I was really tempted to try it out for my music classes that I help teach, but wasn’t sure if it was legit :)
I can only speak from my one experience (though I’m planning to order some more soon actually), but it seems legit as far as I can see.
An aquaintance actually told me that he did not receive his cards and was also NOT billed for shipping and handling. I’m thinking it was more likely an error on his part where he didn’t follow through to the final confirmation screen. As I say, it’s sort of like when you book a plane ticket through Travelocity, Orbitz or Expeda these days and you have to go past several screens offering you rental cars, hotels, travel insurance and so on. Or if you register a domain at GoDaddy you have to go through many pages asking if you want private registration, web hosting, domain parking, etc etc.
VistaPrint seems to have a similar profit model and you do need to page through all those things to actually get your order submitted.
A bit annoying, but still legit. I must say, of all of them, GoDaddy is the most annoying in my opinion, but that’s just me. I guess they pick up a lot of extra sales that way to make it worth annoying everyone who buys a domain.