Snapfish, an online photo sharing and printing service owned by Hewlett Packard is being shut down in India, Belgium, Netherlands and Spain.
The company informed in a
blog post that it will discontinue offering services through its India website, Snapfish.in, on 16th September 2013. The development was first reported by
NextBigWhat.
On an
FAQ page created by Snapfish addressing concerns related to the service's closure, it informs that Snapfish will be discontinuing its service in certain countries in order to invest in the development of their core markets.
It advises its customers in India to complete any saved projects and place their orders by 16th September 2013. However, it clarifies that customers do not need to close their accounts, though they can still choose to do so by contacting Snapfish customer support team.
It also clarifies that customers will not lose any of their uploaded photos and they can downloaded their photos for free through the Snapfish India site until 16th September 2013, after which they will able to access and download their photos from any other Snapfish site.
Customers can order their projects up until 16th September 2013 and would be required to use their free product credits to place orders till the same date post which all promotional credits will expire. Remaining pre-paid credits or gift certificate balances will be paid back to customers and refunds will start after the site is shutdown, it informs.
Snapfish also recommends existing customers to join Photojaanic.com, another photos focused online service, which claims to be HP's partner for Snapfish in India. Interestingly, Photojaanic is also offering vouchers and offers worth Rs. 1500 to Snapfish customers who sign-up on the site. However, users will not be able to sync their Snapfish photos with Photojaanic, and will need to re-upload them. The latter is not run by HP or related to Snapfish, though.
Other photo printing and photo merchandise websites that offer similar services include Zoomin.com, Printo.in and itasveer.com.