This past week, consumers were hit with two pieces of potentially disastrous news from the photo book world. The culprits . . . Costco Photo and Shutterfly. Unbelievably, after these announcements, these two giants are also partnering together moving forward in a new joint venture. Costco and Shutterfly want to sell you photo products, they are not in the memory preservation business.
If you are using these (and other) photo book sites to store and share your photos, you are going to have to regroup and fast.
Here’s the news:
1. Costco Online Photo Center is Closing
Essentially, Costco will close its online photo center and consumers have until January 28 to order last copies of photo books, calendars, etc. Then, consumers must be sure to download their photos by January 31st or potentially lose their digital photos. You may be able to have the photos transferred to Shutterfly.
Problems with this scenario:
- You’ve been working on a family history photo book for months. Now, you have less than three weeks to finish it. (And never mind about getting copies of it in the future.)
- Other important projects you’ve been saving are going to be gone. You won’t be able to order them again.
- Your family memories are living in Costco’s Photo Center; you don’t know if you have them all saved. Now, you have around three weeks to get them downloaded to your computer.
But. . . the cheerful news from Costco . . . “We are partnering with Shutterfly and you can receive free shipping and 51% off every purchase!”
Well, that might be nice. But Shutterfly is in the business of ending beloved services as well. Wait til you read the next piece of news!
2. Shutterfly Ending Shared Site Services
To be honest, I didn’t even know this Shutterfly service existed! I haven’t trusted photo book sites to save my photos since 2013. Back then, I lost photo book projects when another photo book company declared bankruptcy.
Many people love using Shutterfly’s Shared Site Service. Essentially, users create a secure, personal web page for their photo collection. They can communicate, connect and share with others, order photobooks and prints, etc. Girl Scout Troop Leaders and sports groups loved the service. Now, it’s a potential digital nightmare.
One of our YouTube viewers contacted me on Friday because he’s been the photographer from his retirement community since 2008! He has countless photos in this shared site. He was thinking about moving the photos from Shutterfly to Amazon Photos. Watch my review of Amazon Photos here. He’s going to have to figure out what to do with his 1.5TB collection of digital photos.
Download Your Photos Today!
At Pixologie, we teach consumers to:
- Save their photo collections on their computers (or an external hard drive)
- Back up the collection in two places (one site in your house, one site outside of your house)
- Upload family photos to a Forever® Permanent Storage account so you can share, enjoy today and preserve for future generations.
If you have photos in either Costco or Shutterfly, you should download them to your computer and save in a folder with your other photos and videos. Stay tuned for a video on how to do this coming later this week!
Sources:
https://blog.cheapism.com/costco-photo-center-closes-partnership-with-shutterfly/
https://deal.town/shutterfly/please-read-important-update-regarding-your-use-of-shutterfly-PKT9KUV78
2021 Costco Blog Post – https://pixologieinc.com/costco-photo-centers-closing/