It’s the least wonderful time of year—at least for some Minted customers who were hoping to see their holiday cards arrive on time.
The startup, which was last valued at $733 million in 2018 and is backed by blue-chip investors like Benchmark, TCV, and Menlo, has driven irate customers online to complain that Minted failed to deliver their holiday cards, then fudged shipping timelines and told customers that it simply could not locate inventory.
In Fortune’s interviews with five Minted holiday card customers, all reported they believed the company had deceived them about the status of their packages, saying the boxes had shipped. In reality, FedEx tracking showed that shipping labels had been created (meaning the company may have merely affixed a FedEx label to the package but not yet shipped the boxes). In some cases, Fortune saw email chains to support these stories. Versions of this experience have been shared many times over by customers who took to X to voice their frustration with Minted this season.
“They just lied, and just kept lying over and over and over,” says Genevieve Guenther, a climate scientist who serves as a professor at the New School and an expert reviewer at the United Nations, and has been a Minted customer for more than 10 years, noting that the company’s service has seemed to worsen in recent months.
Minted was founded in 2007 by Mariam Naficy as a crowdsourced internet art fair, and has become an online stationery kingpin with over 500 employees and 10,000-plus designs. It cornered a portion of the market for holiday cards, wedding invites, and other bulk card orders, backed with $333 million from top venture capital and private equity shops as well as angels like Yahoo ex-CEO Marissa Mayer and Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman. The San Francisco–based company lured customers from established players like Shutterstock and local paper stores with artist-made designs, buzzy partnerships with companies like Pottery Barn, and generous discounts. Though it has not shared its sales numbers, in 2019 the company told Forbes it was increasing revenues by 39% annually.
But this year, many Minted aficionados believe it is spiraling. Like Guenther, Krista Frame has been a loyal Minted customer for years. The Chattanooga mom couldn’t justify traveling for the holidays this year with two young kids at home. Instead, Frame went all in on cards in lieu of in-person visits—spending over $700 in combined family photo-shoot and Minted costs. On Dec. 22 she said she was still waiting for the Christmas cards that she ordered in November and were slated to arrive Dec. 5: “It’s been one of the worst company experiences. I’m just done.”
But are these stories cases of poor customer service and supply-chain issues or something more problematic?
Minted’s chief operating officer, Sarah Wallis, told Fortune that over 92% of Minted’s orders were delivered on time or early, and over 97% were delivered on time, early, or one day late. “Despite our best, round-the-clock efforts, and close collaboration with shipping carriers, less than 3% of orders were delayed by more than one day,” she said in a statement, chalking up the misleading shipping notifications to “seasonal demand,” leading FedEx to err (though customers reported the errors in Minted’s notifications). “These status delays do not impact the final delivery date of an order.”
In response to this, a representative for FedEx told Fortune: “FedEx on-time service levels have been very strong during the holiday season. We will continue to work directly with our customer to resolve any supply-chain issues they may be experiencing.”
It’s worth noting that customers took to X to express similar sentiments about Minted competitor Shutterfly.
Guenther says she spent two hours on the phone with Minted customer service this month. She ordered her family holiday cards on Dec. 5, paying for expedited shipping to have the cards at her New York City home on Dec. 13. After the package did not arrive, Minted promised her, via customer service representative calls and shipping emails, that the 60 cards would arrive by increasingly late December dates. When she did receive the cards on Dec. 18, too late to send out to recipients by Christmas, Guenther said the addresses were misprinted, running off the envelopes. “They never offered to reimburse me or anything,” she said. “I don’t know what’s happened to the company.”
Another Minted customer Leah Frelinghuysen experienced similar woes. Around 50 cards in her 200-card order featured misprinted addresses, leading the Washington,D.C.-based communications director to address them by hand after spending hundreds of dollars with Minted. For Frelinghuysen, who ultimately took to X to voice her frustration, this incident happened after the company told her they could not locate her cards or provide any sort of status on the order for a week. “This is a basic customer service issue: You can’t figure out where my products are,” she says. “Next year, I’m going to a local stationery store.”
Want to share an anonymous tip about Minted or tech? Message Alexandra Sternlicht on Telegram or at alexandra.sternlicht@fortune.com.
