Touchnote use a credit based system, with credits expiring after 12 months. They will neither refund nor extend them, so if you don't use up your credits your money is lost, i.e. they are happy to steal from you. Companies that force you to buy credits first before you can buy the actual product put profit before the customer. Credits hide the true cost of your purchase, and trick you into thinking you've bought something. Furthermore, once they have your money they can do what they want, including letting them expire without actually having sold you anything. Invariably you will forget that you have credits sitting in your account, and when you finally remember chances are it is too late to spend them, or you don't have time or a need to exchange them for the actual product. Touchnote is no exception to this. They do send you reminders that your credit is about to expire, but when you have no time or need to send a card at that moment in time your money will be gone. You might as well have burned your money, or chucked it down the drain. They justify the need for expiring credits with ludicrous excuses such as not being able to provide you with good deals (the more credits you buy the cheaper they become). Sure, discounts for bulk buying is nothing new, but there is not one single reason why they need to expire, just because you've bought them in bulk. Their explanations and justifications are a masterclass in clever marketing language, hiding anti consumer business practices behind positive sounding language. For example: if you subscribe to their monthly Bronze premium plan at £2.49 a month (billed annually, so not a monthly plan at all!), one of the perks is that you get one free card a month. The truth, however, is that you do not get a free card at all—you're _paying_ for it, at the costly price of £2.49! To put that in perspective: the smallest credit bundle you can buy costs £9.95 for 5 credits, that's £1.99 per credit. It doesn't take a genius to work out that your 'free' card costs 50% more than if you were to buy the 5 credits bundle. Furthermore, you 'free' cards do not roll over, so if you have no card to send in a given month, or you simply forget, bye bye £2.49! Another 'perk' of the premium plan is that additional cards 'only' cost you £1.99 each… see the problem here? No saving at all compared to just buying the smallest credit bundle! The Silver plan fares no better: Silver gives you 2 'free' cards for £3.99 a month (again, billed annually) so that's still £1.99 each, while additional cards only costs you £1.50 each. who really sends more than 2 cards _every single_ month in order to make this worthwhile? Because remember that in order to save 49p on a card you first have to spend £47.88 (annual billing) in order to get 2 'free' cards a month. The Gold plan, at £7.99 a month (once again, billed annually) is where you finally start to see some savings on your 'free' cards (oh, the irony) as you get 6 of them at only £1.33 each, but apart from the fact that you're getting fleeced on the free cards, the real sting in the tail here is that additional cards costs £1.25 each, hardly any saving at all compared to your 'free' cards, and a saving for which you have to fork out a whopping £95.88 in advance. You have to ask yourself here: do you really spend £96 on postcards and/or greeting cards every single year? Is it worth spending £96 in order to get a 25% discount on postcards that otherwise would cost you £1.99? Do you truly send at _least_ 6 postcards _every single_ month? The worst thing about the premium plans, however, is that suddenly your credits do _not_ expire any longer! So it is, in fact, _entirely_ possible to not let purchased credits expire after all, Touchnote have simply moved this behind a paywall! It is also important to note that while your credits don't expire on the premium plans, the 'free' cards _do_! In other words, if you do not send your 'free' cards within 3 months on the Silver plan (6 months on Gold), you _will_ lose them, so you're basically paying £3.99/£7.99 a month in order to get a marginal discount on any additional cards. Let's take a closer look, shall we? If you don't use your 'free' cards, on the Silver plan you'd have to send at least 8 cards _every_ month in order take advantage of the 49p saving per card (£1.50 per card instead of £1.99) and to recoup your £3.99 investment. On the Gold plan it's even worse: you need to send at least 11 cards a month to benefit from the 74p saving per card (£1.25 per card instead of £1.99) and to recoup your £7.99 investment. That's a _lot_ of postcards to send every month! Sure, you can buy bigger bundles to bring the cost per card down, but even on the biggest bundle the cost per card only drops to £1.67, and that will set you back a massive £149.95—money you risk losing if you don't use up those credits within 12 months of purchasing them! Of course you can (try to) take advantage of the rollover of the not-so-free free cards, but that really piles up: 6 cards every quarter on the Silver plan, and 36 (!!) cards every 6 months on the Gold plan, before your money goes up in smoke. Even if you could save them up until the end of the year, who really has more than 24 people on their Christmas list, let alone 72? And remember: they're _not_ free cards! You've paid £48 (Silver) or £96 (Gold) for them, that's a lot of money to spend on postcards! When Touchnote first appeared on the market, there were very few, if any, companies that made it possible to send old fashioned postcards from anywhere on the planet where you have an internet connection, right there and then. Times have changed, however, and Touchnote are no longer unique in what they offer; there is plenty of choice in the market, as is evident from this very website. Do not fall into the credits trap, and do not believe in the premium subscription fallacy! Stay away from Touchnote at all costs, and buy your cards from companies where you can pay with plain old money instead of credits. The savings gained by purchasing credits are minimal; only serial postcard senders are likely to see any real benefits without the risk of losing their money. For the rest of us: you've worked hard for your money, not to give it away to some company who puts profits before the customer. If, in spite of all this, you still think Touchnote is a good company to go with, at least the print quality of the cards is nice, so they get one star for that.