I recently created some calendars at lulu.com: an excellent print on demand service – I was experimenting with some options, and had some proofs printed and sent to me. Excellent quality – really happy with them. Then a week later I did it again with some different images and as I was checking out to purchase I realised the shipping prices had gone up by more than 4 times – charging me $110 to ship to Australia rather than the $15 it had charged me for shipping multiple copies only the week before.
After trying a couple more times thinking it must be a mistake – I searched the site for some information and when there was none available I searched the forums – and it seems there is some major anger out there by international users of lulu. With crazy prices being charged for international shipping and no explanation about what is going on. There is no official response from Lulu and anger that lulu have appeared to have abandoned their international customers.
One user says that their postage has increased from 4.99 to 71.00 euros – when they asked the help desk whether or not this was a mistake the reply was ‘This is not actually a mistake. Admittedly, we are checking to see if we can do anything to offer less expensive or cheaper shipping services.’ Another user shipping to Slovenia says their postage went up from US$10 to $166.73 for a standard book.
Speculation abounds about what is going on – ‘they either operate in a realm of fantasy, or are about to go out of business, or are giving up on the International market, or are just cynical.’
So at the moment I don’t recommend using lulu if you live outside the US – I am currently also investigating other options.
{ 12 comments }
