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 for $5 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

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 ads on the back ($3.99 if you don’t want your cards to have the VistaPrint URL on the back, for example). Then of course you get offered all sorts of complementary (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 reasonable.

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 and easy to pass on, but this one struck me as a bit deceptive. If you do the offer, I’d be curious what others think about that (leave a comment)

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 (again, if you try it, leave a comment please; I’d be curious about 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

My cards arrived quickly, the quality was better than expected. After that, 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.