The ordering process
Next Day Diplomas has a very clean and easy to navigate through website. They offer a variety of diplomas, including high school diplomas, college diplomas, and high school equivalency diplomas (or GEDs). If you’re buying a college diploma, you can choose either a template or an actual replica. Hoping to get the best representation of this company’s ability to match our school’s real diploma, we chose the more expensive “College Replica Diploma” for $199.
Next Day Diplomas offers both telephone support and live chat. Their live chat service never seemed to be on whenever we visited their website, so we were forced to communicate only over the phone. Although we are aware some people do prefer phone support, we feel that if you are going to advertise “live chat,” you should actually follow through and be available for your potential customers to chat with you.
We placed our order on 10/13, hoping to pay with a money order or Western Union. However, we realized in the order process that they only accepted credit card payments. Actually, out of all the companies we reviewed, Next Day Diplomas had the most limited payment options. Paying by credit card was a bit inconvenient, though as we've mentioned elsewhere on this site, credit card payments are probably the safest way to make an online purchase.
Since I wanted to remain anonymous in placing orders for this review site, I went to Target to purchase two American Express gift cards. I placed an order over the phone with customer support, and my order shipped out within 24 hours.
Next Day Diplomas had a well-run support department, friendly customer service over the phone (thankfully, since their chat feature wasn't on when we needed it), and processed and shipped my order within 24 hours.
The shipping process (including dates and time)
Our diploma shipped sometime on 10/14. We were not emailed confirmation of shipping, or a FedEx tracking number. This was disappointing. However, about a week later it did arrive in our mailbox. It arrived in a yellow envelope, with another flimsy FedEx envelope inside that. Surprisingly, the diploma was not damaged. This was surprising to us because our document from Diploma Xpress was shipped the same way and arrived totally destroyed.
What my order looked like
Our order came with a letter reminding us that we should only use our fake diploma for novelty purposes, and that we should call their support team if we had any concerns or problems. Although we know they are just looking out for themselves with this letter, we couldn't help but think that a letter with their company name ruined any chance of keeping our order discrete. Still, this wasn't as bad as some companies we reviewed, like Diploma Makers and Diploma Xpress, that put a “fake” sticker right on the diploma. Ouch! Why go that far?
That all being said, they threw in an extra copy of the diploma at no additional charge, which was a really great touch! They used very high quality and thick paper – probably the nicest paper out of any company we reviewed. The ink was clear and crisp, though for some reason the name of the school was a little blurry, and contrasted and was too obvious when compared to the rest of the sharp and crisp letters on the rest of the document. We weren't too happy with the seal, which was too small and was flaking off into pieces. There were also a few grammar issues, which we’ll list at the bottom of this document under “Cons.”
Value
For $200, we thought our diploma was competitively priced. We purchased their “replica college diploma,” paying extra for it, and I must say there were quite a few key differences. These differences included the small, flaky seal (and where it was placed on the document), how the school name was arched (our real school-issued diploma displayed the school name in a straight horizontal setting). It was obvious to us that Next Day Diplomas had never seen our school’s real diploma!
Summary of overall experience
There were highs and lows to all points of the ordering process and diploma quality. Although their chat feature wasn't available, they did have friendly customer service via their toll free telephone number. Although their seal and layout were not too authentic, they did use very high quality paper and inks. Spending more money for their “replica college diploma,” we expected more from them.
PROS:
- High quality paper (probably the best of all websites we’ve reviewed)
- Gold foiled seals offered
- Great ink quality – the text was very bold and sharp
- They gave us an extra copy of our diploma at no charge
- No misspellings, like PhonyDiploma.com's diploma had.
CONS:
- The name of our school at the top heading was very blurry, and was in an arch instead of a straight line. Like I said, the real diploma is straight and not arched so they screwed this up.
- Although there were no misspellings on the diploma, the punctuation was a little off. For example, they ended one sentence with a period and left the period off another.
- Although great that they offer gold foil seals, the seal itself was disproportionately small and was flaking off.
- Not bad, not great. Better than stuff like ND-Center.com but not on DiplomaCompany.com's level.
