The nicest, warmest and most pragmatic doctor I've ever had (and I've lived in six cities)

I'm a designer with 20 years in the industry and have dealt with every kind of printer out there. I've printed business cards and postcards with Dynamite Express Cards recently and have been VERY happy each time. The price is astounding and the print quality is just fine. It's not gold class, but I don't 'expect' high-end quality when I'm paying just over $100 for 500 postcards!

The thing is, businesses like these (just like pre-press bureaus back in the day) are best dealt with by design professionals who KNOW how to set up a print file properly. This isn't something you can 'take a stab at'.

Most of the problems people here have encountered (except for the odd customer service glitch) can be traced back to their own lack of experience. Some of the most common beginner errors are: setting up colours poorly; exporting low-quality PDFs and using amateur software; having files with printable artefacts on hidden layers that they don't see; not understanding trim/bleed issue; not understanding trapping or how ink can 'fill in' tiny type or details and not using proper fonts (and not converting them to outlines!).

In my experience, if you set up your files correctly, you'll rarely have an issue, but even then, you MUST realistically expect at least 5% of your print jobs to have 'some' sort of problem. It's just the nature of the beast.
cheers,
Matt
www.matthk.net