By the time I stumbled across these worrying reviews of Zno I had already placed a sizeable order worth $970

Our Wedding Album is a 12 x 16 50-page (thick) Flush Mount album with genuine leather cover. I had ordered one copy for my wife and I, and one for my parents (with a 30% Fathers Day discount.) I immediately tried to cancel my order, imagining months of disappointment and back-and-forth with customer services. However Zno have a very fast turnaround time it was already well past the one-hour cut-off. I was kicking myself for not checking the reviews earlier.

But anyway, lets rewind a bit

My wife had actually ordered a Zno lay-flat album just a week earlier for her parents. When it arrived they were reportedly very impressed by the results. After taking a look at their website I decided to go ahead and produce our wedding album. For me the online tools struck just the right balance between flexibility and convenience. The prepared layouts were a good starting point for someone like myself who has never arranged an wedding album before. Dragging and dropping photos was swift and efficient. I was very impressed how slick the website was.

I did encounter a couple of bugs: The layout tool makes an attempt to show smart guides that are meant to help you snap and align one picture with another. This is to ensure the that everything lines up precisely. However I found these to be inaccurate and of little use. To precisely size some photos I wanted to type an exact number into the photo properties. A bug prevented me from doing this: Instead I had to use the up/down arrows in the property editor to obtain the right number. A needlessly laborious workaround that could be easily avoided if they fixed this bug. Making custom layouts was more time consuming than it needed to be.

According to their description of flush-mount prints, there seemed to be no technical reason why Zno could not satisfy my requirements: Archive-grade Fuji silver-halide photo paper exposed by laser. When I worked as a professional photographer in London, I had used the same process for my leather-bound portfolio. However, back then I ran print experiments with the local print shop testing various levels of sharpness and gamma to get the perfect result. With Znos manufacturing in China, there was no way to do this easily or quickly. I had to take a leap of faith that they knew what they were doing

The albums were dispatched within two days of me placing the order. I had originally wanted my parents album to be sent directly to them in the UK, but after reading the reviews I instead had it sent to me in New Zealand. I wanted to ensure the quality met my expectations.

After a few days the albums arrived THEY WERE EXTRAORDINARY! Everyone was thrilled.

The prints were sharp as could be, including the hero ones filling entire spreads. There were no noticeable color casts, and lights & darks appeared as expected. The binding was exquisite with the photos well fastened to their substrate and no delamination. Both albums were of consistent quality. One more thing to note: Our album is the maximum size allowed by Zno, a satisfyingly heavy 7.1kg!

Regarding all the bad reviews, I have a few thoughts.

Clearly their quality control has been lacking. My wife and I could just be very lucky, or it is possible they have tightened up their processes. There is also the fact that satisfied people are less likely to sit down and write positive reviews the most vocal tend to be those motivated by particular, legitimate grievances. That said, there is clearly a huge imbalance between the number of positive and negative reviews. Something was obviously not right.

As I mentioned, I actually tried to cancel my order. Im now strangely relived that I left it too late. The albums were everything I wanted and more. That said, I can completely understand the trepidation some people may have after reading these reviews. I certainly wouldnt spend $970 with such doubt on my mind.

Of course, I could just be one of the lucky ones. If Zno have indeed improved their QA process I think they need to reach out and do a better job of reassuring people. They need to address these public concerns honestly and transparently, because they are likely losing many customers that would be delighted with their product. My interactions with their customer support were also very positive, warm and timely, receiving responses within a few hours.

So Zno can deliver the highest quality; after all, there is no technical reason stopping them. Despite some annoying bugs, their online software is very convenient, ideal for those who have no interest in producing layouts from scratch in Adobe Illustrator or the like. That said, I would probably advise testing the waters with a smaller, more modest order that is not mission critical first.