Making Memories, Saving Money

Every Monday is Intents and Purchases day at Living Behind the Curve.

On Saturday, we had the pleasure of attending a family picnic at my grandparents’ house. When I was small, picnics like this were commonplace, and the entire neighborhood would arrive on Sunday afternoons for fresh local corn and burgers or pizza made lovingly from kits provided by Charlie K’s, the pizza stand at the farmer’s market.

Those days are long gone, but I found great joy in watching my baby sister toddle around the yard, getting into mischief behind the shed just like my brother and I used to. (Yes, sister. She and I are almost exactly 27 and a half years apart.) I chased her around all day, and in addition to some sore muscles, I got some great pictures. Two of them in particular are so nice that I wanted to have them blown up to 5×7 and 8×10 prints. My printer is good, but it’s not quite that good, so I popped online to research the cost of online print services.

All told, it took me about 2 hours of research to find a price I was happy with. I found I could not get an accurate quote (cost to print + shipping + time) unless I created an account on each site, uploaded the files and added them to my shopping cart. I would not normally spend 2 hours to save a few pennies, but some of the prices differed so greatly that I felt the research was warranted.

For four 5×7 prints and two 8x10s, this is what I found (delivery methods and times noted):

• Snapfish: $11.26, shipped direct, 3-5 days + processing time
• CVS Photo Center: $13.94, available for in-store pickup in 1-2 business days; $15.83 shipped direct, 2-4 days + shipping time
• Flickr: $8.03 shipped direct, 5-7 days; $12.34 available for in-store pickup at my local Target in one hour (they do not offer non-express printing for in-store pickup)
• Clark: $10.69 shipped direct, 3-5 business days + processing time
• KMart Photo Center: $10.11, available for in-store pickup in 1-2 business days
• Walmart: $6.24, available for in-store pickup in 7-10 days; $7.89, shipped direct in 5-7 days

In the end, I purchased the direct ship package from Walmart, because it was the most cost-effective. I paid the extra $1.20 to have the photos shipped because I’m impatient — according to their estimates, I’ll get them faster that way. I also know that Walmart is a landmine of financial temptation, and by spending the $1.20 now, I may actually be saving money.

While doing some last-minute fact-checking for this post, I came across Winkflash. Their prices are great ($6.03 for my 6 prints), and from the looks of their site, they appear to be a relatively new company. Their WYSIWYG-type upload interface is a nested javascript file browser that, while buggy, was easier to use than any of the interfaces I encountered on the other sites. (It seemed that all of the sites used one of two basic interfaces, actually, so Winkflash was also a breath of fresh air.) They also promise a 24 hour processing window, except during busy holiday seasons.

If you’ve ordered prints from Winkflash, I’d love to hear your experiences. The reviews I’ve come across have been indicative of the love/hate bipolarity typical in online reviews.