Does your website charge you $15 to cash your profit?

[photography by trish]

I just got a notice that printroom.com only writes checks for $100.00 and up now. This is new because I got a check last month for less than $30! This is really a deal breaker for me because I do not make much from prints/guests of events I shoot.

Does your website (assuming you use a website like printroom.com) charge you $15 to write checks under $100/make you wait til you've accumulated $100?


Here is what is says and where to find the entire list of terms:

http://www.printroom.com/info/Terms_of_Service.asp?shopperid=GHP81V19T71D9GFS8AR GPL9P2EUJ9DC7&

For every order by an End-User, Printroom will retain the fulfillment costs of prints and/or other products (greeting cards, gift items), shipping and handling fees, minimum charge fees if any, as well as the thirteen percent (13%) commission fee (charged on the gross order payment not including shipping and handling fees, and taxes), and the three percent (3%) credit card processing fee (charged on the gross order payment). The balance of each order, minus any chargebacks that may be due to Printroom for prior orders and/or other dues by photographer to Printroom, will be forwarded to the Photographer in a monthly check no later than forty-five (45) days after the order has been shipped to the customer. The amount due to Photographer must be $100 or more for Photographer to receive payment from Printroom. If the amount due is less than $100, the accumulated amount will be retained until additional orders cause the amount sue to exceed $100, after which time that accumulated amount will be paid to Photographer on the next regularly scheduled payment date. Photographer may request a check for the accumulated amount less a $15 processing fee. Printroom's current practice is to mail payment by check of amounts due to Photographer on or about 15th of the calendar month for all the transactions occurred on the previous calendar month.

Maybe if all the printroom.com users contact them and complain about this we can change the terms.

[amfoto1]

I haven't heard anything... Perhaps because I have a Pro account with them? Or maybe they just haven't gotten around to email me yet.

My payouts have been well over $100 anyway, but I can understand why they would want to wait and accumulate smaller sums. The cost of mailing out the check is why. I believe other similar vendors do the exact same thing (Smugmug does, if memory serves, or at least they did in the past... I haven't used them in 3 or 4 years).

I recently got a reimbursement check from the local utility company. Some friends of mine worked for their customer service department. They told me it probably cost at least $5-$10, maybe more, to send me a check in the amount of 4 cents! I'm not going to cash it. Maybe I'll frame it.

[photography by trish]

i didn't get an email. i just saw a link and check out what it was about.

i can understand why they'd make you wait. i suppose i just feel like they're falling back on their word. i wish i could change the terms of our contract whenever i want.

but i do get what you're saying. thanks for pointing that part out to me. i was thinking they'd only have to pay postage.

[Picture North Carolina]

Good gawd, why do people continue to use fulfillment services when it is so easy to do it yourself?

They take a percentage when you sell a picture but now they're going to charge you a fee to be paid? ?

Yet one more reason to host your own pictures.

[dreamcatcher23]

CannedHeat - perhaps if you get to the stage where you're having to do hundreds of orders a week you'll see why people use fulfilment services.

[Picture North Carolina]

CannedHeat - perhaps if you get to the stage where you're having to do hundreds of orders a week you'll see why people use fulfilment services.

Perhaps you're right. But right now I'm doing just fine focusing on high quality at high prices, not volume. I considered being a WalMart, but decided on being a Nieman Marcus.

But to be fair, you're right - lower volume at higher prices allows the luxury of self-printing and self-shipping. If I were forced to crank out stuff like an assembly line, I might very well need help.

Edit: on the other hand, there is another valid analysis here. You say "hundreds of orders a week" but the discussion is about profit payment checks of less than $100. If a person is cranking out that many orders for such low profit, perhaps a different business model should be given serious consideration.

[Zansho]

I used to be the same as you Canned, until I got over $1,500 worth of reprint orders from a wedding I did about a year ago (pure dumb luck, don't ask me how that happened - it was a fairly large wedding with tons of out of town visitors). At $30.00 for an 8x10, it was nice.. but my Epson printer was running out of ink and I was paying through the nose for paper, even though I bought roll paper - AND shipping and handling AND the most important thing - TIME. It took me about 5 days to do all the printing, packaging, mailing and making sure everything was sent to the right person.

It was a serious PITA. Ever since then, I've contracted Zenfolio to do my order fulfillment (as they use MPIX for their printing, and I'm pleased with their output) and it takes a lot off of my hands. If I have to pay $15 bucks to save me a week's worth of time, hey, it's totally worth it.

[Picture North Carolina]

I used to be the same as you Canned, until I got over $1,500 worth of reprint orders from a wedding I did about a year ago (pure dumb luck, don't ask me how that happened - it was a fairly large wedding with tons of out of town visitors). At $30.00 for an 8x10, it was nice.. but my Epson printer was running out of ink and I was paying through the nose for paper, even though I bought roll paper - AND shipping and handling AND the most important thing - TIME. It took me about 5 days to do all the printing, packaging, mailing and making sure everything was sent to the right person.

It was a serious PITA. Ever since then, I've contracted Zenfolio to do my order fulfillment (as they use MPIX for their printing, and I'm pleased with their output) and it takes a lot off of my hands. If I have to pay $15 bucks to save me a week's worth of time, hey, it's totally worth it.

Yea, but you see that comes down to the cost-analysis. People on a regular basis compare the cost of MPIX prints to the cost of ink and paper in home printing. But with fulfillment services, that cost is skewed by the commissions and fees paid to the fulfillment services.

I have yet to see a valid analysis of home printing costs vs. fulfillment service costs with all of the fees and commissions rolled in.

Besides, you're comparing apples and oranges. You said you got $30 for a small print which is indeed a very good price. However, that puts you out of the class of "hundreds of orders a week" in a discussion about profit checks less than $100.

Edit: but yes, I agree on the PITA. I would not like to crank out endless prints either.

Edit: But this has evolved away from the point of the thread which was about another new charge by fulfillment services. Disregarding business models, my point is that people, even high volume photographers, can still do their own hosting. You simply maintain your own website and transactions yourself. While doing so you can still have somebody like mpix or millers drop ship your order. On the financial side the deposits into your account are direct but without all the fees and commissions. On the printing side, somebody else is still doing all the work.

The app I use for my gallery did cost money, yes. I think it's now going for $329 or something. But it does it all. And if I were an event or wedding photog, it would do just fine. It could easily be configured to process payment and send the order to mpix. It's what it's built for. And my complete hosting costs are $9.95 per month.

[Zansho]

There are a few exceptions I do make, however. Bridal portraits and canvas prints are done entirely by me, this way I can ensure proper quality and such - and I reprint ALL of the B&G's orders personally, and hand deliver them myself.

But for the family, who orders all that, I can live with MPIX and Zenfolio doing my stuff for me.

It's one thing to do $300.00 worth of reprint orders from the B&G, but completely another to do 1k+ from outside family members.

[dreamcatcher23]

CannedHeat - yeah, totally true, hundreds of orders a week and less than $100 would be very worrying indeed!

A fulfilment service is a good choice if you need to do a high quantity and don't want to worry about delaying peoples orders when you go out of town etc. If the commission is low and the quality is high enough it's a good choice, it also gives you more time to concentrate on advertising, shooting and other important things. There's definitley a place for self-fulfilment in certain business models, but there's no point doing it if you can find a good processor whose charges are low. Compare the time it will save you to the comission cost and ask yourself if your time is worth the extra money or if you could do something more productive with the time.

For the record, I would NOT recommend external fulfilment for high value wedding work, it's simply not worth the risk to your reputation.

WRT the OP's point, it may be worth moving to another processor if the charges are unnacceptable, however, if it's only $100 it's not really a significant sum of money so why not just let it build up over time and deposit it when its reached the threshold?

[Picture North Carolina]

Unfortunately, what to do may be a moot point. If this industry is like other industries, once a major player adopts a policy, others follow suit.