COLOUR ME HAPPY (Colour Mailer Digital Printing Service)

Member Name: steveuk

Product:	Colour Mailer Digital Printing Service
Date:	07/05/03 (323 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fairly cheap, Excellent quality, Great offers

Disadvantages: Long-ish delivery times

So you've bought your new super duper digital camera, have taken lots of test photos of your plants, pets and children and have successfully emailed them to your friends and relatives around the world. Happy? Possibly. Possibly not. What about your grandparents (or even parents) who don't have a computer or access to the Internet?

Well, not to worry ... there are a few options available:
(a) Buy them a computer, sign them up to an Internet Service Provider and teach them how to use email. "Too expensive", I hear you say.
(b) Use your regular inkjet printer to print them on regular or even photographic paper. Print quality may leave a lot to be desired.
(c) Buy a photo printer. Quality will be much better but this may not be very cost effective if used only occasionally.
(d) Use a professional digital print service such as ColourMailer!

ColourMailer is a service of ColorPlaza ltd based in Switzerland and offering digital printing services on Agfa professional paper.

There are three ways of sending your digital images to ColourMailer for printing:
(a) Website upload. This is done using a very simple form. Complete your details, select the images you need printing and upload them.
(b) ColourMailer software. Use the special software available from the ColourMailer website. This is my preferred method of submitting my pictures for printing. It allows me to manipulate the images to fit in the selected print size and then uses a secure connection to the ColourMailer servers to transmit my pictures and billing details. This software is available for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS.
(c) CD-ROM. This is recommended for a large number of pictures and/or when pictures are of high resolution as uploading them through the Internet using either (a) or (b) above may take some time. To give you an example, I recently uploaded 16 images of 2 or 3 Megapixels each (total size 16MB) and it took 25 minutes to upload o


n a broadband connection. I imagine this would be at least double on dial-up. All you have to do is copy your images to a CD-ROM and put it in the post along with your invoice/delivery information and no need to worry about slow uploads or dropped connections.

Once you have submitted your order all you have to do is wait for the postman/postwoman to deliver them to your door almost anywhere in the world. I have ordered from ColourMailer a few times and it took just under a week to get the prints. In addition to the pictures ordered, there is a handy index print for free.

Sample prices per photo:
11x15cm £0.21
10x15cm £0.20
13x17cm or 13x19cm £0.55
20x27cm or 20x30cm £1.70
15x20cm £1.10
Postage & Packing is £1.50

For prices in Euros and US Dollars and other products such as T-shirts, mugs and calendars have a look at the ColourMailer website.

Pros:
What I like the most about ColourMailer is the quality of final product. The photos are printed on professional photographic paper and they look brilliant. The prices are not the lowest available on the Internet but if you are planning on using the service occasionally you can take advantage of ColourMailer special offers. These are emailed on a monthly basis. For example, this month it's 25% off photo enlargements and posters and the chance to complete a survey on ColourMailer's customer services, for this I was given 20 prints for free! I thought you may like that :-) I did mention the words "survey" and "free" in the same sentence :o) Last month it was photo printing for 17p/picture instead of the usual 22p.

In addition to this, ColourMailer have a refer-a-friend scheme in place to attract new customers. Every new customer that places an order and uses the email address of an existing customer as the promotional code receives 10 free prints. The existing customer receives 2 photo enlargements for free. If on th
e other hand
you
prefer 5 free photo enlargements, just follow the "free test order" link on the ColourMailer website.

Cons:
There is, however, one thing I don't like very much about ColourMailer. The first one is their deliver times. It usually takes just under a week, so if you're in hurry try a high street shop. I think the pictures are actually printed abroad (the postmark is French and the return address is in Switzerland) which may explain the not so quick delivery.

Contact details:
You can contact ColourMailer customer services through their international toll-free telephone number 00800 333 222 11, through their websites http://www.colourmailer.co.uk or http://www.colormailer.com for those of you outside the UK (notice the different spelling of "colour") or by email info@colormailer.com

Happy clicking ... and printing.

*UPDATE* I have just received another set of prints from ColourMailer. I placed my order on Monday evening and got the print on Friday morning, which isn't so bad. The postmark this time was German, which may explain the difference in the delivery time.

Copyright Steveuk 2003

Summary: