The online customer Printer I use for my artwork has decided to stop offering short-run print services. They have now instated a 25 copy minimum for any print run. I thought maybe I was missing something on their website, but I called their customer service department and they confirmed it.

What’s frustrating is they are still very affordable even with the minimum requirements. I need to make a choice whether to use them at all even when I have a need to print 25 or more of anything. The other frustrating bit is I have been framing my art in software at 11″x17″, the size their printers output. Granted, I have always worked within 11″x14″ because that is a standard Wal-Mart sized frame. If I find another affordable vendor, I don’t want to lose image quality because of it.

This is a very valuable lesson though: Don’t trust a vendor to offering the same product or service indefinitely. I could have learned that from just about anywhere in the last 25 years of my life by looking around and simply watching, but I have never personally been burned by this phenomenon.