What does “View cards” mean?
What does “Buy in Bulk” mean?
What does “Got a Shot?” mean?
What does “Vote on shots” mean?
What does “PA Services” mean?
Can I purchase an individual card?
How do you keep the costs down to £1 per card, or less?
Why are your cards sold in mixed packs of five?
You say that you are trying to erase your carbon footprint. How are you trying to do this?
Do you sell any non-photographic cards?
Do you sell any photographic products other than cards?
Do you personalize greetings cards?
Do you sell any cards with messages in them?
Why am I asked whether I want cellophane wrapping in the bulk buy section?
Can I purchase bulk-buy cards in greater numbers than 25, for a cheaper price?
Do you supply a barcode with your cards?
Why does it take so long to upload an image in “Got a Shot?”?
Why has my uploaded image not appeared in “Vote on Ranges”?
How have you worked out your postage charges?
Why has my portrait photo come out as landscape in "Got a Shot?"
“View cards” is where you can check out all of our greetings card ranges. We sell our cards in mixed packs of 5. For a greater number of cards, or for single-design cards, please see the “Buy in Bulk” section.
“Buy in Bulk” is where you can purchase packs of 25 single-design cards, with or without individual cellophane wrapping (for use in shops).
“Got a Shot?” is where we ask you to upload your own photos, if you think they would make great greetings cards; these shots are then voted upon by the General Public. Any shots which we feel would make great greetings cards (not necessarily the most popular shots according to the vote), will be invited to send the full-sized image to us; we offer a £20 voucher for the site for any such submission. Please note that the upload of your image will be far quicker if the file size is first reduced to around 20KB.
“Vote on shots” is where you get the chance to vote on the photos you think would make the best greetings cards. You may only vote once on each shot.
“PA Services” is the page where you can set up your contacts’ details, and ask us to email you free reminders of important events, such as Birthdays and Anniversaries.
We are sorry that this is not possible at this time, and is not planned for the near future. The reason is that we are trying to keep costs down for you and for us: if we send you one individual card, the cost to us increases immediately by 30 pence for postage, plus the cost of the extra labour involved in seeking out the one card that you want. We would also have to purchase packaging to send the single card to you safely, which is bad financially and bad for the environment.
The idea behind this website is for you to keep a stock of cards, both blank and pre-printed, which you can dip into, rather than racing to the shops to purchase one last-minute.
There are two answers to this: industry and community. Industry, because we are printing the cards industrially on large printing presses, with a large enough print-run to keep the per-unit costs down. Community, because the images themselves are mostly donated by keen amateur photographers who love to see their images on greetings cards!
Historically, it has been very expensive to purchase rights-managed images from organisations such as Getty; however, because we are keen photographers ourselves, and because we use the best images from the Cards Unlimited community (uploaded in the “Got a Shot?” section), we can produce a set of original card images from around the world at a fraction of the normal cost.
We would not run the website if we had to charge any more than this. We think it is ridiculous that a simple blank card can cost £2.00 or more in the shops!
We felt that five was a useful stock to keep, and “five cards for five pounds” would be attractive to customers who are more used to spending £1.50 - £2.00 for a photographic greetings card. The cards are mixed, because we think this is more appealing than selling five of the same design. However, if you would be interested in purchasing a pack of five, same-design cards, please let us know.
If you would like to purchase several cards of one design, the current option is to buy in bulk, where the packs contain 25 cards of the same-design.
We are currently committed to donating 5% of our profits to tree-planting and carbon eradication schemes. We only use paper from sustainable sources, in which one tree is planted for each tree cut down, and all our products are fully recyclable. As the business grows, we hope to switch out supplies to recycled and chlorine-free.
In a nutshell, our aim is to eradicate our carbon footprint, such that the effect of each (recycled) card has been environmentally neutral. This is immensely difficult to calculate accurately, and even harder to do. Please support us by recycling. If you are a supplier of environmentally friendly (and chlorine-free) supplies, or have any suggestions to help us in our mission, please contact us. More information about our company objectives is available in the “About” section of the website.
No, we don’t and we have no plans to extend the range beyond photographs. We want our selection to be the best and most diverse single range of photographic cards and products on the internet.
At present, we don’t, although we plan to expand soon. We hope to sell canvas prints and “photocards”, various sizes of thin postcards which can be framed and hung on the walls. We are also considering selling calendars. If you have any further suggestions for products, please contact us.
No, at present we do not, because our cards are produced industrially rather than at home on digital printers. There are many internet sites catering to this demand, such as www.moonpig.com.
Yes, we do. Please use the Search box to the bottom left, setting "Message" to "Non-Blank". We hope that you will be able to keep a “handy pack” of birthday, or mixed message cards, so that you never need to run to the shops! We are looking to extend this range, and would really appreciate your feedback on which images you think would make the best pre-printed cards (feedback).
The bulk-buy section is aimed both at consumers, who may be throwing a party, and businesses who are looking to stock their shops. Shops often sell greetings cards in cellophane wrapping to prevent them from getting dog-eared and dirty. If you are a consumer, please just select the non-cellophane option (this is cheaper, too).
Cellophane is not great for the environment, but we can’t think of an alternative which allows shoppers to see the card whilst protecting it. If you can think of an alternative, please tell us.
Yes, as you increase the number of packs, there is an increased saving (you can see this in the checkout section). For orders above 200 cards, please contact us via enquiries@cardsunlimited.com.
This can be done for large orders, but does not come automatically with our cards. Please contact us at enquiries@cardsunlimited.com to discuss your needs.
This is probably because you have uploaded a large file. Please bear with us! If you are able to reduce the file size of a copy of the shot (never reduce the file size of the original!), please do so. The ideal upload size is around 20kb, and upload of files of this size take a matter of seconds.
Our staff must check the shots to ensure that they do not break any of our rules. For example, we will not display obscene images, images of children or any image depicting an identifiable person. Please bear with us. If your image has not been displayed within 24 hours, and you see no reason why not, please contact us on enquiries@cardsunlimited.com.
Our postage charges are based on Royal Mail’s UK, Europe and Worldwide charges, for both the size and weight of the packages in question.
Our upload software works out whether your shot is portrait or landscape and alters the upload accordingly. However, if when you view the shot on your own computer your portrait shot appears landscape, that means that the file itself is not tagged as portrait (by default, photos are landscape on most digital cameras). Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do about this: we cannot rotate your image using our software. You should delete your image (go to My Account and scroll down to My Shots); we may choose to delete the image on your behalf if we notice that it is wrongly orientated. In order to fix the problem, it might help to enable automatic portrait-recognition through the menu screen of most digital cameras: this way you will not have this problem again.
If you have any further questions, not answered here, please email them to enquiries@cardsunlimited.com.
