Just a quick report/review on my recent purchase of some metal prints from Bay Photo.
I have been looking for an alternative to fotoflots for a while. Fotoflots are great, don't get me wrong, but they are a bit pricey and the mounting system is a bit overdone.
I put in an order with bay photo for 3 16"x24" metal prints on glossy. Order was placed on a Sunday. Prints were completed on Monday Morning and shipped out that same day. From what I know, they were shipped from California overnight air to Canada. Northern Saskatchewan Canada to be exact.
I received the prints on Wednesday afternoon much to my surprise! The amazing thing was, only $10 duty from UPS. They finally changed their duty/brokerage fee to make it much much more reasonable to use them. I used to pay $50-60 in brokerage fees when I used UPS.
So obviously, very quick amazing service from Bay photo, but how are the prints?
In a short word.... AMAZING!
They are super light weight and so easy to mount. They have a foam mounting block on the back of them to float them off the wall. Attached to that is another little piece of aluminum with a hole in it to hang your print from a single nail! YES, very easy! I had all 3 prints hung in under 2 minutes.
The gloss is nice, but if you have any windows in the room, you will want to go with satin. Color and print quality is identical to what I get from my calibrated monitor and my prints out of my Epson 2880.
They are weatherproof and scratch proof. You can clean them with any mild cleaner. The float block is nice and hidden compared to the fotoflot metal which can be seen when you at shallow viewing angles to the float.
All in all, I'm very impressed and will be doing business again with them!
I've actually considered having some pics of my kids swinging printed on these and hanging them on the wall on my back porch. I still may. It would be different.
I had two of these done in B&W of my sister's children and gave them to her as Christmas presents.. they came out excellent. They were both B&W images with shallow depth of field.. I was worried they would not be as good for B&W after some of the stuff I read online, but they came out great.
I'm going to order some more of them at some point in color (and larger). They really have excellent color gamut & tonality.
What was the shipping costs. I have also ordered from Bayphoto and got 3 canvas done at 24x36, 1 metal like yours at 16x24 and a couple smaller thin wrap canvas plus some even smaller straight up prints on metallic paper. Only thing is I knew someone going on a road trip to California at the time and they brought them back in their truck. I would love to order more but I'm scared what the shipping will add to the price. How much was the shipping for your 3 metal prints?
Shipping cost is still up in the air. I don't know as it was COD. UPS only charged me $10 at the door but that can't be right and I'm expecting a letter in the mail saying I owe $100!
I will let you know when the dust settles what the final cost is.
Their gallery wraps are fantastic also, with a satin finish. I've ordered quite a few 24x36 prints for my customers and they are very happy with them. The turnaround from Bay Photo is just phenomenal, especially if you live in California!
Those look great! I'm curious to see what the satin finish looks like in a room with light... my big holdup has been that I don't want to fill my room with mirrors!
I'm very glad to see BayPhoto getting some good press here.
In April I had a really (off the charts) screwy project that led to my first experience with BP.
In short, upon my explanation of the urgent circumstances and happily agreeing to a very reasonable rush fee, they turned a 40 page album in less than 4 hours (my upload to their ship time) and I received it the next day, 1700 miles away.
Joel, Tiffanie, Christine and several others (wish I had their names) were amazing.
The fuller story is that it was a prototype and it didn't need to be perfect but that's part of the point - as I worked with Joel on the phone and explained the urgency, he guided me through the comments to add to the online order to ensure the book didn't get delayed beyond the required shipping time in their quality assurance steps.
And he wasn't just making it happen - he made me feel like he was nothing but happy to make it work. My mission became his mission. Their staff essentially hand-walked the album through production and put it on a FedEx plane while I was off having a beer and boiled crawfish.
But get this... my dinner was interrupted by a BP call requesting clarification on payment method so they could get it shipped for me. Seriously, I felt like I had the entire BP staff tending to nothing but this pain in the rear order.
I had a conversation with Joel a few days later and he joked: "yeah, I had people coming up to me and saying 'you promised him WHAT?' ".
Two weeks later when I ordered the full run of 15 books (also last minute but more sane timing than needing a 4 hour turn) I received three calls from them as quality assurance matters came up (again, it was an unusual project) to make certain I would be satisfied with the result.
I've never had better customer service in any product or service category, period. And I suppose most importantly, the quality of the albums was exceptional. I cannot recommend them highly enough... but please don't tax them like I did (I want them to still like me). They made a huge exception because Joel could sense I needed it to happen. But geez, that kind of rise-to-the-occassion service seems to extend to all they do. You can't really buy that. It's either there in a corporate culture or it's not.
What a first rate company and what great employees.
My kudos to Bay as well. Although my experience isn't as involved as Nolaguy's, I can likewise vouch for good service and a quality product, especially the metal prints.
After having used Bay for a number of metals, I decided to try another lab which was running a promotion for metal prints (a service they'd just begun to offer) at a significant savings. After receiving the three prints, two 20x30s and one 11x14, I was initially pleased. However, when I viewed them in direct sunlight they took on a mottled, uneven appearance that I never saw in any of the metals from Bay.
I contacted the vendor and jumped through a hoop or two before anyone acknowledged that there might be a problem. Finally, I was told to call and talk to technician who would help me figure out, "what's wrong on your end."
I recently had a print done on Bamboo through BP. It was my first print using them so I considered it a test print, but a pretty expensive test though- $295. When it showed up the print was lifting from the edge and began to curl up. I spent about 5 minutes on the phone with customer service and emailed them a picture. Within a few days a perfect print was on my doorstep- free of charge and no need to return the damaged print. That's exactly what you should expect from customer service, but don't always find.
