Photobook Worldwide Anmeldelser 

Unexpected £57 customs charge on a £200 order – extremely disappointing

I’ve added this review to reflect how the UK version has joined the Worldwide version.

Having ordered from Photobook UK previously without issue, we recently spent approximately £200 ordering several personalised photobooks. Considerable time went into designing them, and delivery was advertised as free.

Only after ordering did we receive demands from courier Aramex for an additional £57: £42 import VAT and a £15 administration fee. That’s an unexpected increase of nearly 30% just to receive goods we’ve already paid for.

It appears the books are being shipped internationally, despite being ordered through a UK-facing website. Photobook’s terms say import charges may apply, but this does little to prepare customers for such a substantial additional bill.

More concerningly, HMRC guidance VBOOKS3130 explicitly states that qualifying printed, bound photobooks are zero-rated for VAT. Our books have hard covers and flexible, permanently bound, printed pages, which appear to meet those criteria. We are therefore questioning why 20% import VAT has been charged at all.

It is particularly frustrating to face a £15 administration fee for processing customs paperwork when we are now having to investigate whether that paperwork was correct in the first place.

Looking through other Trustpilot reviews, it is apparent that customers have been raising similar concerns about unexpected customs charges for years.

We have contacted Photobook Worldwide and Aramex to challenge the charges and are awaiting a resolution.

We don’t want a refund for the books or to cancel the order. We simply want the personalised books we spent hours creating, delivered for the price agreed at checkout, with the correct UK VAT treatment.

A deeply disappointing experience from a company we previously trusted. Buyers in the UK should be aware that the advertised price may not be the final amount they are asked to pay.

I created about 20 gorgeous photobooks on Photobook America and was always super satisfied with my ability to design every page exactly as I wanted. They featured a fantastic array of preset page layouts, all of which could be entirely altered and customized down to the most nuanced details. Moreover, you could start with a totally blank slate and design each page according to your imagination, or you could drop your photos into a project, select a format, and let their design feature fill it for you automatically then tweak from there if inclined. In layout and details, you could go as elegant and tasteful or as campy and silly as you liked with all of the options to customize and you could fill the pages with as many images as heart desired.

Now that they're Photobook Worldwide, the design platform has completely changed. It's been dumbed down to entirely basic, with extremely limited preset layouts that are repetitive and unimaginative. What's worse, their "expert mode," is limited to what a child could do. You can't even fully resize or move a frame. Custom designing the pages is all but impossible, and they now limit the number of images you can fit in a spread to six. You also can't arrange page by page, but have to work in spreads. The design platform itself is extremely clunky and frustrating, with the layout zooming and shifting every time you make a change, such that you can't even see the full spread on your screen as the default. Maybe it was designed for a phone and for people looking to get something simple done quickly, but for anyone looking to create something special, this platform may not work.

I am EXTREMELY frustrated trying to create a gift for my mom and probably will never use the site again to create a book unless major updates restore some of its previous functionality. I'm almost afraid to complete and order a book for fear the quality of their product and service has declined to match the poor experience I'm having on their site. I spent too much time uploading and figuring out how to use the new platform to delete and start over somewhere else, but I'm writing this review to save someone else similar frustrations if they are into creating meaningful projects with rich designs.

The company also is not transferring saved projects from the old site to the new, and there's no way of downloading them, so if anything ever happens to your books, you can't order others. Their suggestion is to keep copies of your original photos and recreate the books in case of loss. Wow.

20 NZD for "express shipping" scam

Paid extra for extra for express shipping ( 5 odd business days). Over 2 weeks later, it still hasn't been shipped or delivered to the courier. Not 1 star yet, as it may still arrive some day... Customer support do not answer queries and ignore all emails.

Completely Frustrating – Ignored, Excuses, and No Recovery

I was a repeat customer because Photobook used to deliver quality. This latest order has been a total disaster. Shipping charges were unclear, and the process for multiple projects is extremely inefficient—uploading photos nine times manually is unacceptable.

Tracking is confusing. The order stayed “printed” while I received an unexpected delivery notice from SF Express, with no clear link to my order.

The product quality is terrible. Canvas tiles arrived stacked with no protection, resulting in stains, tears, and a finish that looks like plain white cardboard. I have received all items but will not display any of them.

Customer service has been shockingly poor. After multiple emails and messages, they keep asking for photos already provided, offer empty apologies, and claim “we will have a meeting about this” with no recovery or solution. It’s obvious they will do nothing.

Other competitors offer far better quality and service at lower prices. I will not return.

I am totally satisfied with the photobook I have ordered. The photobook arrived in 10 business days in Thailand to my hotel. The support is very responsive and ready to help. I was worried about the negative reviews here, but everything was great. Thank you

Very bad experience ordering from Photobooks. Its been over a month since my order (Order Number: 10419179) and haven't received my Photobook. They provide lousy documentation when shipping the order and my shipment is stuck with the custom authorities for over 20 days now.

Customer support is non existant and they just use silence to frustrate customers into giving up. Will never order from them again !

First, I have been with Photobook for over 15 years. Not that I am a heavy user.
- I find their price competitive compared to the other 2 I have tried.
- as mentioned, in over 15 years, I had a few issues encountered. All were resolved immediately.
- Not an expert in papers, but so far, the more than dozen of Photobook I have with them, they are still in very good condition.
- this may not be objective, but I don’t like squares, the 8x11 is not for me, kind of small, tried 15x17 and find it too big. So for a long time, I always work on 11x 14. Nice size for me. Specially a full page picture. Love the 2 page spread.
- yes they print in Malaysia. I don’t understand why my Photobooks has to go through the US instead of direct to Canada. Volume?
- Price I find competitive. Yes, their sale prices will bring you below the free shipping threshold. Business.
- their AI auto layout is better than the other I tried.
- they also use ‘date taken’ info as default sorting which I find useful. Others could be using this too since this info is in the jpeg file—unless removed.

From my side, they can add solid color backgrounds(which they already have) but textured.

This company has a very bad service and didn't honor what they promised.
ordered 10 books with different design at the same time. They charged the shipping fee one by one, meaning i paid 10x shipping fee. But shipped all 10 books at once. I contacted them for the refund because they overcharged the shipping fee. They agreed to refund some amount. But when i contact them again, they disappear, never reply to my email anymore. Contacted to service by email, also nobody respond. Felt cheated. Will never use this company again. If there is a negative star, i'm happy to give it to them. Those review saying that the customer service is great, it's not true.

I purchased a wedding gift for my wife.

Had it down to arrive at our hotel.

Product never came.

Online support have been useless. It’s our wedding day today and they’ve taken $300 odd off me and I still don’t have this picture book for my wife.

Great customer service experience -- Ventus was super helpful and responsive, answering all my questions promptly by email and helping me with my order. Fast delivery and nice product. Thank you Ventus and Photobook Canada :)

Unfortunately the quality of the photo paper is not suitable for humid countries. Upon arriving they looked great, but within a week they were fully curled in half, while other pictures that I had purchased from a different service have been completely fine. Photobook will not fix the problem if you reach out to them. They blame the humidity rather than the quality of their paper

Just to start off, lots of fake reviews for this place obviously written by employees so take with a grain of salt.

This is not a worldwide company they only print in Asia then send off. Meaning you are likely to pay additional taxes once it reaches its destination. Due to the extremely inflated value of a book I printed I ended up paying % an additional 40 USD to Brazillian gov because the product was shipped from Asia to US etc before finally arriving there.

Took a lottttt of back and forth emails before I got a partial refund was frustrating. Don’t reccommend.

my mom really love it. super nice the simple books! definitely will order again..

super love it! nice and pretty prints perfect for gifting...

Ang ganda ng quality as always! Lahat na ata ng major ganap sa family namin naka photobook na. We super love the quality and ang dali lang gawin.

Superb quality! I love how vibrant the color is. I do really love photobook 😊

100/100🤩 We love it so much! The Photobook was nice and the material is quality. Surely order again thanks photobook!!

The Photobooks that I ordered exceeded my expectations! The items are affordable but the quality is really good! My photographer friends even asked me when I posted about it. Would def recommend this to my fam & friends! :)

Love the quality of the print, my husband loves it too.

Having photobook is really amazing.. Quality image from phone made it so special.