Oi… who would have thought printing invitations for your daughter’s 10th birthday party would become so complicated! It seemed easy to me.  Daughter creates invitations at Build-A-Bear website, Dad takes invitations to Fedex Kinko’s for high quality color printing. I am so naive! Read on to see what I had to say about the entire situation to these two corporations.

Dear Fedex Kinko’s and Build-A-Bear,

I’m writing this e-mail to both of you esteemed corporate behemoths because together you are making life difficult for me, your customer.

My lovely daughter is about to turn ten.  It has been our tradition to have her birthday parties at Build-A-Bear.  We’ve been very happy doing this. She proudly created her own invitations using the Build-A-Bear invitation builder located here:

http://www.buildabear.com/party/invitationsAndThankYou.aspx

Unfortunately, I have only a high resolution laser printer at home.  No color. In the *past* I have used Fedex Kinko’s for my color printing needs. I’ve been happy doing this.  Until tonight.

Because I have no color printer I created a file of the invitation my daughter created at the Build-A-Bear website, burned a CD, and drove to my local Fedex Kinko’s to have 20 invitations printed. Imagine my suprise when instead of color prints I recieved a lecture on copyright law.

I attempted to reason with the *THREE* clerks involved in making the decision whether to print my daughter’s invitations. I demonstrated the website and the steps she used to create the invitations.  But alas, Fedex Kinko’s desire to enforce copyright outweighed my desire for customer service.  And I remain sans invitations.

So I turn to the respective customer service arms of you two corporate entities in the hopes that between us we may resolve this impass. Two alternatives suggest themselves to me, apart from buying a color printer that I don’t want and printing them myself.

The first would be for Fedex Kinko’s to educate their clerks when to apply a little common sense. I’m sure that not *every* attempt to print a page that contains a trademarked image is an attempt to deny Corporate America their just profits. Or perhaps Build-A-Bear could include licensing information on their website that would allow Fedex Kinko’s clerks to print invitations like these where the intent is obviously for personal use. Feel free to suggest other solutions I may not have considered.

I await your response with breathless anticipation and my daughter awaits her invitations. Surely this dilemma can be solved!

Regards,
Michael

I’m curious to see if I get anything beyond a form letter. I’m sure I’ll be able to get these invitations printed easily elsewhere, but I had just to write to see how they would handle this!