Menu
Blurb Customer Service Phone, Email, Contacts

Blurb
reviews & complaints

www.blurb.com
www.blurb.com

Learn how the rating is calculated

1.4 30 Reviews

Blurb Complaints Summary

2 Resolved
18 Unresolved
Our verdict: With Blurb's very poor resolution rate, careful consideration is needed. Research their service comprehensively, and read up on how they handle customer disputes. If you face issues, be prepared for potential challenges in obtaining resolutions and explore other service providers as backups.
Verified
The authenticity of the customer service contact information for Blurb has been meticulously verified by representatives from ComplaintsBoard using our proprietary verification system.
Get notifications about new complaints and reviews of Blurb. We promise not to send you any unrelated messages.
Share
Claim Your Business
Take control of your profile: address complaints and engage with reviews
Write a review File a complaint

Blurb reviews & complaints 30

Filter reviews by rating
5
0 review
4
0 review
3
1 review
2
2 reviews
1
7 reviews
Sort by:

Newest Blurb reviews & complaints

ComplaintsBoard
J
Verified customer This complaint was posted by a verified customer. Learn more

Blurb Blurb BookWright Review: Slow, Unreliable, and Frustrating to Use

So, I was in a bit of a pickle when Apple decided to drop Aperture support, which meant that I could no longer create photo books using it. I was looking for an alternative and stumbled upon Blurb BookWright. I must say, it was a bit of a bummer.

Firstly, importing around 170 photos took me a good half an hour, which was a bit of a drag. But I thought, okay, I can live with that. However, when I started adding images to the album, it took another 20 to 30 seconds for each image to be added. I mean, come on, either the import should be slow or adding images to the album should be slow, but not both.

Then, I decided to create my book. On the first page, I wanted to add one image and two text boxes. But guess what? The app crashed. I mean, seriously? I wanted to add three columns of text, but I gave up on that.

A week later, I decided to give it another go. I started adding text and tried to link two text boxes so that it would flow like two-column text. But when I tried to save the book, it refused to save because "there were errors". I mean, what kind of errors? Thanks a lot, guys!

I closed the application and restarted it, hoping to continue where I left off. But when I started adding a few more images on page 2 and 3, it wouldn't let me save the book again, "because of errors". I mean, seriously, what is going on here?

Overall, I would say stay away from this app. It's just not worth the hassle.

Read full review of Blurb
Hide full review
ComplaintsBoard
A
11:19 am EST
Verified customer This complaint was posted by a verified customer. Learn more

Blurb Not sending my profit payment checks to me

I have published a book on Blurb and the book has sold 21 copies on Amazon.com. My profit from that sale comes to $ 290.58 which Blurb must send me a check of.

On November 15, the Customer Service Manager, named Lena, sent me an email saying that she has "sent in a request for the check to be processed and mailed to me." She later sent me another email saying that she would send the check with a tracking number through the Post Office, to which I replied saying that it is a good idea to add a tracking number to it. But up to this day, close to a month later, she wrote me and said the check is still not ready to be sent.

I am beginning to think there is something wrong going on because after about 10 days, I inquired and she said the check was still processing. Then, more than 2 weeks later, I inquired again as to why such a delay, and she replied and said she checked again and found that there was a "formatting error." I don't know the kind of formatting error she was referring to.

Now, the whole thing is heading to 1 month and I inquired again, and she wrote me 2 days ago saying the check is still processing (see attachment of her email statement).

One month to write or fill out a check is too much time and I doubt that she wants to send me my profit payment check, in view of the many complaints I have seen about them on the Internet — including not sending payment checks to the author who painstakingly wrote the book!

Desired outcome: She needs to put my October profit payment check of $ 290.58 in the mail to me immediately.

Read full review of Blurb
View 0 more photos
Hide full review
ComplaintsBoard
R
5:20 pm EST

Blurb Blurb Photo Books

Horrible horrible service. I have contacted them many many times to finalize my book project and they never responded. Over the course of several months. I have uploaded my project after 4months of work, and there is no usable link after it successfully uploads to Print Project. Book does not appear in My Projects or My Orders, and there is just no way to print the order. Very very frustrating. Do not order from Blurb.

Desired outcome: Well if they want to contact me with this simple issue, it's up to them. 45 page book is ready to print They don't seem to care about my $400...

Read full review of Blurb
Hide full review
ComplaintsBoard
D
7:26 pm EDT

Blurb refuses to actually send profit payment by check as per agreement.

Blurb claims they sent the profit check Sept 12, 2019. After over a month of not receiving the payment I contacted Blurb through the website.
After a week of playing email tag, I was told a replacement was sent October 19, 2019 and if it don't arrive by Friday October 25, 2019 they would send another.
No profit payment was received. By not receiving either mailings indicates either the USPS stole both of the profit payments and did not cash them and just threw them away, or Blurb never sent them in the first place.
Since the odds and common sense indicate Blurb never sent them, on October 27, 2019 I asked Blurb if profit payments was just a scam and if they never had any intention of sending any profit payments.
Now they will not respond to repeated requests to resolve this matter through the website.

I then tried to call them directly because they wont respond to repeated requests through the website to resolve this issue but Blurbs phone number is fake and leads nowhere (415) 364-6300
Blurbs other number (415) 362-2067 has been disconnected.
Both more indications of deception by Blurb.

Read full review of Blurb and 1 comment
Hide full review
1 comment
Add a comment
R
R
Ron Levy
, US
Feb 13, 2022 5:14 pm EST

Horrible horrible customer service. I've been trying to order/print my book for weeks and weeks. Uploads fine from Booksmart, but then there are no clickable links to Print Project or continue. I have filled out their contact form many many times and they never respond. Do not order from Blurb. They obviously could care less.

ComplaintsBoard
R
5:28 am EDT

Blurb Horrible!

ok, blurb, where's your customer service? Do you have issues in recruiting people? Or you only have a machine that sends automatically generated answers and doesn't help at all? And needless to say, my question was simple, I didn't have a hard issue, but I got a copy-pasted answer that had nothing to do with my situation. Are there real people working for you at this department? So disappointed with this.
I only wasted time on your useless service.

Read full review of Blurb
Hide full review
ComplaintsBoard
L
9:16 am EST

Blurb Customer service is extremely ridiculous!

This site is horrible, but their customer service is extremely ridiculous! You cannot get an actual person on the phone. You can write tons of emails, but there will be no response. I sent them many emails, but only after almost a month I got my first reply from Blurb. But there was nothing useful there! They only sent me a link where I could find the answer to my question. They also mentioned that I can send them emails if there will be any problems. They told “We are always happy to help our customers”. I messaged them again, but the same happened – no response. They have obviously gotten too big to care about the individual customer anymore.

Read full review of Blurb
Hide full review
ComplaintsBoard
R
8:32 am EST

Blurb Awful customer service

I only have horrible comments about Blurb's Customer Service team. My two main issues are: (1) Blurb continually prints RED too loud. The REDs are never close to the original pictures. Despite multiple attempts with customer service at resolving it; they did not care; (2) after an order, I asked Customer Service to inform the printer to go outside the standard spec of 20 pages for a SmartBook, but Bruce from Customer Service did not care; he was not willing to entertain contacting the printer for an adjustment; too much effort to place one call and help a customer; he has too many orders to allow for an exception...

Read full review of Blurb
Hide full review
ComplaintsBoard
E
4:35 am EST

Blurb We've got our ebook price being changed without notifying us

We've not had a great experience with Blurb. We spent over $700 to install Adobe InDesign, and then had to reformat our book to fit the specs. Then there were multiple problems with the uploads. Very frustrating! Now, we've got our ebook price being changed without notifying us! Our $14.99 Ebook, went to $12.99 last week (we didn't do it). We reset it to $14.99. This week it jumped to $16.99 (we didn't do it). We've reset it to $14.99. There's no consistency with Blurb. We have to post separate widgets for the Ebook, and Ipad version. Customer's can't click on a full menu of our books multiple-versions. We wouldn't recommend this site.

Read full review of Blurb and 1 comment
Hide full review
1 comment
Add a comment
K
K
Kent from Blurb
, US
Nov 21, 2012 9:42 am EST

Hey Eborce,

I work at Blurb. I'm sorry you've run into this problem – it's not something I've heard of happening before. Please contact our Support Team so they can look into this for you: http://blur.by/Teoa6W

Kent from Blurb

ComplaintsBoard
R
8:34 am EST
Resolved
The complaint has been investigated and resolved to the customer’s satisfaction.

Blurb Duping customers

Blurb.Com is billing me for two photo books due to an error in their online order form. This error was not because I did not check my work. It was because their order form gave me an error message of failure on the next screen after I entered my credit card. This indicated to me that the order was not placed and it had failed. I resubmitted the order using my PayPal next. I now have two books coming and not one. This is FRAUD! It's easy to see that they are intentionally giving folks a failure message in order for them to place a second order.

Read full review of Blurb and 1 comment
Resolved

The complaint has been investigated and resolved to the customer’s satisfaction.

Hide full review
1 comment
Add a comment
M
M
MaryRC
Fresno, US
Jul 19, 2010 11:32 am EDT

Blurb bound the wrong parts of my three books together. They obviously never bothered to check the products before they shipped them. Worse, Blurb never admitted any possibility of their having made an error. Their e-mails said they were sorry that I HAD A PROBLEM with the quality. They placed the blame entirely on my not liking the results and would take no responsibility for having bound the books completely wrong. They acted as if I am lying and demanded scans or the books themselves. I sent scans, but I rather doubt I'll ever get this corrected, despite all my effort, time, and money.

ComplaintsBoard
H
11:37 am EST
Resolved
The complaint has been investigated and resolved to the customer’s satisfaction.

Blurb Bad service

I just created a book of one of my daughter’s collage stories using Blurb's software, and ordered one copy: looked great. Got excited and ordered 10 copies: looked great too, and friends, family and co-workers all wanted one. When I ran out of the 10 copies, I ordered 10 more. YIKES! Should’ve read the comments on the Internet earlier and counted myself lucky to get 11 copies that were not messed up.

These last 10 copies are terribly finished, with the hard cover improperly glued to the body of the book (the white paper that glues onto the hard cover–front and back–is full of bubbles, as if my 4 year old had glued it).

I promptly contacted customer support and they agreed to send me a new set… and asked me to return the deffective ones to them! HUH?! What are they going to do with them? It makes me feel that, even though I sent them photos of the issue, they do not believe me. Also, this is the first time EVER that, when ordering something that is custom-made and having an issue, I am asked to return it to the seller/manufacturer. It is just a TERRIBLE policy. Makes the company look cheap and distrustful of its customers. Plus, even though they will be sending me a UPS label to pay for the shipping, who is paying for my time to take the darn box of books to the UPS store?!

That’s it for me, I will NEVER do business with Blurb again. I will start looking into other online printing services, which seem to abound... something else I learned when I started looking into the complaints that folks have about Blurb.

Read full review of Blurb and 7 comments
Resolved

The complaint has been investigated and resolved to the customer’s satisfaction.

Hide full review
7 comments
Add a comment
J
J
Jim Weidenfeller
, US
Dec 02, 2015 9:26 am EST

Customer service is non-existent. Phone number is eventually answered with a message that you've received "an auxiliary number and call back on another number (not given). Then "for better and faster service our email is open and manned 24 hours" Two days later and I am still not getting an answer to my questions.

E
E
evaz
Rapid City, US
Jan 17, 2015 9:06 am EST

I have had an awful time with blurb. Trouble with their software, changes in their policies since I began. what I was promised is unavailable after spending 6 months researching and writing the book. Technical issues are only dealt with by email so take forever and rarely get fixed. I cried more tears over frustration with them than you can imagine. There is no way to contact their board or directors. Awful!

C
C
Clyman Otis
Glendale, US
Nov 16, 2013 6:49 pm EST
Verified customer This comment was posted by a verified customer. Learn more

I have published three books with Blurb. I love their BookSmart program as it allows complete freedom to create YOUR book YOURSELF. They offer no editing, no comments, no suggestions. All they do is print what you create. I love this system myself! I have had none of the problems that others have voiced. My only complaint is that the copies cost so much. That is my sole complaint. I realize this is not a mass market publisher and that the books I create are one-of-a-kind type specialty books, but still, $50 for a hardback w/jacket 120-page book is a little steep. I am thoroughly satisfied with Blurb's quality. In fact, that's what drew me to them in the first place. A friend of mine sent me a draft copy of his book from Blurb to review and I was very favorable impressed with the quality. When I was ready to have mine published, I chose Blurb for this reason. I purchased the PDF rights for $10 and have sold a couple of dozen disks with the PDF copy on them for $5.00 each. It's true that the author has no control once you release it to Blurb for printing. It's up to you to make sure it is as you want it. That's the beauty of BookSmart. You can SEE what it's going to look like, the colors, the fonts, the margins, the layout. I always order a couple of drafts and hand them out to friends for review before I have the final version printed. When I get my own copy of the final version, I order the special paper. It is BEAUTIFUL!

D
D
Delta2013
Perth Metro Area, AU
Aug 12, 2013 6:57 am EDT
Verified customer This comment was posted by a verified customer. Learn more

BLURB software has no SAVE AS nor EXPORT in any readable format such as PDF or MS Word done on purpose the book can be only printed by BLURB. Writer has no control of file once released to BLURB
No security nor guarantee that book will be not copied and sold without writers approval.

N
N
Norma Padro
, US
Oct 25, 2011 6:53 pm EDT

I'm an author with Blurb. So far all of my books have been very nicely done. I noticed that while preparing my book it stated on how I wanted my books to be cut. I made sure it was well done on my part.
All of my books are great. I'm sorry yours weren't.

M
M
MeKnotU
, US
Sep 02, 2011 6:16 pm EDT

I wish that I had done my homework on Blurb, and checked the BBB and sites like Complaints Board prior to uploading my project, I most probably would not have done business with them.

I concur with MaryRC, Blurb's quality control is nonexistent. I placed four orders with Blurb; the first one was fine. The second order contained books that had barely 1/16” on space left on the vertical cut, they cut that far past their own template cut lines. On my third
order, all of the book covers were not bound properly. They were rotated slightly clockwise, with part of the cover layout on the spine, and part of the spine now showing up on the back cover. My last order, for one book, was fine.

Now, if Blurb can get my first and last order right, they can get them all right. I sent 150 and 300 d.p.i. scans via PDF to Blurb to illustrate the problems, comparing these to books from previous orders that were fine. At first, Blurb acknowledged the problem, for customer service asked me to let them know how many books “had this trim problem.” In a subsequent email, Blurb attempted to blame-shift by telling me that the problem was on my end and my using their program “BookSmart.” Only problem is, I wasn't using their program, I was using Adobe InDesign CS4, with their templates and their pdf export plugin.
Secondly, that excuse does not explain why orders one and four were fine. Thirdly, Blurb totally ignored the covers being bound improperly by not even addressing my complaint in follow up emails.

In my final response letter to Blurb I wrote:

“I find it telling that Blurb has complaints lodged with Complaints Board and the San Francisco Bay Area and Northern Coastal California Better Business Bureau, twelve complaints alone for defective product.”

I am now forced to address this nonsense through the California Attorney General's Office and the Northern Coastal California Better Business Bureau.

If you are reading this OR know of someone considering doing business with Blurb, my advice is to stay away, FAR away. Don't be fooled by the the glitz and polish of Blurb's website, they are unconcerned with customer satisfaction and produce slipshod merchandise. They do have the ability to make a decent product, but they are staffed with people who do not care about the quality of the products that they produce. Additionally, their customer service is sub-par. They make you jump through hoops to prove a problem with THEIR workmanship, yet they then recant a prior admission of fault and error in order that they absolve themselves of any and all negligence.

M
M
MaryRC
Fresno, US
Jul 19, 2010 11:27 am EDT

Blurb has no quality control. The second time I ordered from them, my three books were bound together wrong. They had attached the wrong half of each book, so that they were mixed up — all three books. I explained the problem, but Blurb would not believe me and demanded that I send a scan of the problem.

I explained that I did not have access to a scanner and gave a detailed description of the error they made. They replied that they would not accept my word for it and that I would have to prove there was an error by either giving them a scan or by returning the books.

Since I didn't trust Blurb with my only proof of their error, I decided it wasn't wise to return the books. So I borrowed a scanner and spent nearly two hours scanning in three 30-page books which had been put together wrong.

I did not want Blurb to say my scans weren't good enough, so I made high-quality ones. After a long and difficult upload, I e-mailed the 300 dpi PDF files to Blurb proving that I am not lying about their error. But despite all my efforts, I have no confidence that Blurb will admit their error and send replacements. They have no respect for their customers' word, their customers' money, their customers' time, or their customers' satisfaction.

By the way, the binding is already falling apart. So much for the quality of their work in that respect as well. Besides all this, Blurb never admitted any possibility of their having made an error. Their e-mails said they were sorry that I HAD A PROBLEM with the quality. They placed the blame entirely on my not liking the results and would take no responsibility for having bound the books completely wrong.

Until this happened, I had planned to complete several more projects with Blurb. I had also told several of my friends about Burb and was helping one of them complete a wedding book for her son. Now, however, I am sorry I ever did business with Blurb. I hope my friends, once they have heard what Blurb put me through, will decide not to do business with that company, either.

Blurb Customer Reviews Overview

Blurb is a popular self-publishing platform that allows users to create and publish their own books. The platform has received generally positive reviews from users, with many praising its user-friendly interface and high-quality printing options.

One of the standout features of Blurb is its wide range of book formats and customization options. Users can choose from a variety of book sizes, paper types, and cover options, and can even create their own custom layouts and designs. The platform also offers a range of professional-grade printing options, including hardcover and softcover books, as well as photo books and magazines.

In addition to its customization options, Blurb is also known for its easy-to-use interface and intuitive design tools. Users can upload their own images and text, and can easily drag and drop elements to create their desired layout. The platform also offers a range of templates and design themes to help users get started.

Overall, Blurb is a great option for anyone looking to self-publish their own book. With its wide range of customization options, high-quality printing, and user-friendly interface, it's no wonder that the platform has received so many positive reviews from users.
Trust badge
Collect Your Trust Badge
Be recognized for outstanding customer service

Blurb contacts

Phone number

+1 (415) 364-6300

Website

www.blurb.com

Your Voice Matters: Our Commitment to Genuine Reviews

Empowering Real Experiences

At ComplaintsBoard, we believe in the power of true customer stories. Our platform is a space for authentic voices, where experiences, both good and bad, are shared openly and honestly.

Dedicated to Authenticity

ComplaintsBoard is vigilant in our fight against false reviews. Our team employs robust verification methods to ensure every review reflects a real customer experience, upholding the integrity of our platform.

Encouraging Detailed Feedback

ComplaintsBoard values reviews that come with real evidence. Whether it's a photo, a detailed account, or additional documentation, such substantiation adds credibility to your story, helping others make better-informed decisions.

Balanced and Constructive Conversations

We're more than just a complaints board; we're a community for balanced dialogue. ComplaintsBoard encourages reviews that not only highlight issues but also acknowledge positive aspects, fostering a fair and comprehensive understanding.

Free and Fair Platform

ComplaintsBoard's commitment to maintaining a free and unbiased platform is unwavering. Every review is treated equally, ensuring that your voice is heard and respected, regardless of the nature of your experience.

Is ComplaintsBoard.com associated with Blurb?

ComplaintsBoard.com is not affiliated, associated, authorized, endorsed by, or in any way officially connected with Blurb Customer Service. Initial Blurb complaints should be directed to their team directly. You can find contact details for Blurb above.

ComplaintsBoard.com is an independent complaint resolution platform that has been successfully voicing consumer concerns since 2004. We are doing work that matters - connecting customers with businesses around the world and help them resolve issues and be heard.

Use this comments board to leave complaints and reviews about Blurb. Discuss the issues you have had with Blurb and work with their customer service team to find a resolution.