Beware the business card scam

It's surprising how hard it is to find a good, inexpensive place to get business cards printed in this town. I thought for sure in a city where every third person needs headshots, I'd be able to find a good printer. Not so, it would seem. That shit is expensive. Actors, you have my sympathies.

Lead Actor and I worked together - okay he did most of the work - on a lovely design for a front and back card. The back part is posted above, but not the front part because I'd be nutty to give you crazy stalkers my phone number. Anyway, Lead Actor did it because his day job is as a graphic designer. He designed my website and the current version of the blog.

Anyway, since I had a design and everything I did a mad search for the past couple of days to find a place to get them printed. Staples was reasonable for one side, but doesn't really print on both sides and since my card is very black I didn't want one side black and one side blindingly white and blank. Blech.

I looked at a lot of places in town but they either had no idea how to give me an estimate without making me drive over there or looked particularly incompetent. One place had typos on their home page. I'm not using a printer who doesn't proofread.

That left me with the major online places. I didn't want to use them but I have financial constraints so I sucked it up.

That's when I came across a scam I wanted to point out. There is a company called VistaPrint that offers to print 1,000 cards for like $30. Since most places wouldn't do it for less than $70 that set off some alarm bells so I did a little research.

Every positive reference to this company was a press release. Similar press releases referred to four other companies that are part of the same "network" of printers. I can't remember all their names, but check them against Vista. If they're cheap as hell they probably look exactly like the Vista website because they're all part of the same scam. One of them I remember was U Print.

Here's the scam: You pay your $30 for your $1,000 cards and think you got some kind of major deal. But you didn't read the terms and conditions when you agreed to them. The policy you just signed allows Vista Print to give any third party your contact info AND CREDIT CARD INFORMATION in the interests of "better serving the customer". So you think you bought some cards at a bargain price when what you really did was sign up for a monthly program that charges your card directly without your even being aware of it.

I went to Overnight Printing instead because even though I was paying a little more I know I didn't get scammed and they have some pretty good reviews. I'll be better able to judge when they arrive.

So that just reminds us all - remember to read everything you sign and if it sounds too cheap to be true, it probably is.