14 DAY TRIAL // Yahoo’s Flickr has announced the expansion of its Wall Art service, just ahead of the holidays; strategic timing, as always.
The Wall Art service, which allows users to print their favorite photos on canvas or have them mounted and sent to friends, will from now on be available to customers all over the world.
“Flickr is a global brand and we have been working really hard to bring you our newest products and services. To celebrate the launch of global shipping, we are offering 40 percent off your purchase,” the company announced.
The company boasts that the Wall Art products it has museum-quality materials at its disposal, which ensures that your photos will look great once printed. The Premium Photo Mounts are printed with professional grade paper and mounted on wood-textured edges.
There’s also the Gallery Canvas Wrap, which uses artist-grade canvas stretched across a wooden frame, available in various sizes.
The fact that Flickr is opening its door to the entire world is obviously admirable, but it doesn’t mean much to those living outside the United States. Sure, the service is great and the quality is probably quite high, at least judging by what customers are saying.
Is it worth it?
You can’t even comment on the service price, especially since you’re getting a pretty hefty price cut until right before Christmas, namely December 23, and most printing services charge similar fees when it comes to canvas printing.
The shipping costs, however will drain you dry. In the United States, standard shipping costs $8.99 (€7.2), which means you’ll get the product somewhere within 10 and 14 business days, while the express shipping, which gets your product within 5 to 8 business days, costs $14.99 (€12), pretty decent. If you add the 40 percent price cut, you’d get a more manageable sum, but since this will only last a month, it’s not something you can count on in the long run.
Move over to Europe, however, and you’re going to think twice before ordering one of these. For the UK, standard shipping costs $47.99 (€38.4) and express shipping costs $57.99 (€46.4), while for Romania, you’ll have to pay $58.99 (€47.2) for standard shipping and $70.99 (€56.8) for the express delivery. Considering that the canvas wrap product we chose from the bunch costs $64.00 (€51), it all seems like it’s overkill.
All in all, Flickr’s service is nice and all, but just opening the doors to global shipping isn’t going to do much good unless the shipping is actually done from more countries around the world, which would cut down on the amount people have to pay. This would, of course, get people to actually consider using Flickr rather than some local business offering the same exact service.
