Little F.

I got hooked on Snapfish before investigating other photo sites. I like the formatting options for their photo books. I've used them since 2005 and have grown comfortable with their features. They refunded a photo book that I ordered in error pretty much without question a few years ago. Also, I think their photo book quality is good. As for general, technical questions about the site, I usually get a response in 24 hours. Sometimes they sound formulaic and other times not.

My wish list is that they would 1) offer prints in 3X3 format 2) update their cropping and zooming feature (boundaries are hard to see) and clarify that this process compromises photo clarity and 3) require mandatory preview of all products immediately prior to purchase and update the software used in preview imaging ( I've seen better!).

My interaction with their customer support this week has been extremely frustrating, however. I received a $100.00 gift certificate as a birthday gift from my boyfriend's dad. When I entered the redemption code on their specialized website for gift certificates, I received a message that the code had "already been used."

I contacted customer service through the live chat feature and requested a valid code on the 8th of January. 8 days later, I still have not had a satisfactory response. The chat rep on the 8th asked for the email address of the person who gave me the gift, then stated "Unfortunately, I can't troubleshoot this issue in chat. I need to create a ticket for you and escalate the ticket to our technical team." That was fine and I wasn't too concerned at this point.

The next day, I did receive an email from their customer dervice team requesting my country of origin. I confirmed that I was from the US and was then told that the issue was "forwarded... to our engineers and they will resolve your problem as soon as possible." Once an update was received, the rep was to let me know. No response.

On the 13th I called and was told that their team was still working on the issue but that "surely" I would receive a response in 2 days. No response.

I called on the 15th and asked, kind of as a last resort, what the status was. This rep was the most helpful in terms of placing me on hold to talk to a supervisor. Eventually he indicated that the issue had been resolved and he waited while I tried to redeem the code. I again received a response that the code had been used. The rep sounded frustrated that it wasn't working. Through the course of the conversation, I was again asked who gave the certificate to me. (It feels like a bit of a criminal interrogation each time this issue comes up.) Eventually he mentioned that the code HAD already been used by another party, though it was not necessarily fraudulent.

The rep requested another 24 hours to remedy the complaint. I'm glad that they are working on it.

My boyfriend's dad was a little surprised when he purchased the certificate. He just received an email confirmation with a code. I think he was envisioning something nicer, arriving in the mail, that he could "present" to me. Like an "actual" gift certificate. HP is a printing company after all!

If this doesn't get resolved, I'm dreading relaying all of this hassle to him. I think he'll feel like his generosity has been tarnished some.

That's my rant!