threats from printer..how would you react?
Discussion
About a month ago I contacted a printer regarding having new business cards and flyers produced for my business, we discussed his charges and different prices on quantities etc.
The service offered was mock up/draft of the layout and payment once the final proof was agreed, "your the boss, and obviously if they need changes before we go ahead with the order just let me know !" ..the guy wanted to get it all done in 4 days before he went on holiday and emailed me everyday requesting information, but I was busy and he was told this just wasnt going to happen and i would contact him after his holiday.
I told him I wasnt in a great hurry, but didnt want to mess about with repeated changes as i just didnt have time so would prefer to get it right at the first draft and gave a lot of information afer he returned from holiday.
The first proof came through the same afternoon which was blatantly an online template flyer with a couple of pictures from my website copied and pasted onto it. It was dated, very 80's and the template tag lines terribly cheesy. The business card mock up was ok, but some changes requested.
The second proof came through and the flyers were just as bad with only very minor changes done, obviously he is limited in what he is doing if sticking with the template flyer - so I informed him that I was still unhappy with them and would get back to him with my thoughts on how to change the design/layout when I got time.
After this I have recieved multiple emails complaining that he knew he should have teken a deposit and has done a lot of work and should have invoiced me... he simply hasnt and it now gets to look like desperate attempts to get the order, I already told him I wasnt going to look for someone else and he would have the information when I had time.
This morning I recieve another email stating that he should or may be invoicing me for his "design work " to date and he is cancelling the job off his system and would require full payment up front before going ahead with the order.
I find this all completely ridiculous , the guy has lost an order because he couldnt wait and sent multiple complaining and now threatening emails. I have never dealt with a business card/flyer supplier like this previously.
At the end of the day if I am not happy with the proofs and he is unable to provide proofs that I am happy with there is no order.
I produce multiple plans for customers on a daily basis and until the they are happy with the plans there is no order - the plans are produced to get the order.
If he had either produced a proof I was happy with or just waited until I had time to go through it and work out my own layout he would have the order, but I am now pretty sure I will go with another printer purely due to the silly emails.
The really daft thing for him is that I drafted all the required changes on Wednesday afternoon and just needed to put them in an email and send them over to him over the weekend.
The service offered was mock up/draft of the layout and payment once the final proof was agreed, "your the boss, and obviously if they need changes before we go ahead with the order just let me know !" ..the guy wanted to get it all done in 4 days before he went on holiday and emailed me everyday requesting information, but I was busy and he was told this just wasnt going to happen and i would contact him after his holiday.
I told him I wasnt in a great hurry, but didnt want to mess about with repeated changes as i just didnt have time so would prefer to get it right at the first draft and gave a lot of information afer he returned from holiday.
The first proof came through the same afternoon which was blatantly an online template flyer with a couple of pictures from my website copied and pasted onto it. It was dated, very 80's and the template tag lines terribly cheesy. The business card mock up was ok, but some changes requested.
The second proof came through and the flyers were just as bad with only very minor changes done, obviously he is limited in what he is doing if sticking with the template flyer - so I informed him that I was still unhappy with them and would get back to him with my thoughts on how to change the design/layout when I got time.
After this I have recieved multiple emails complaining that he knew he should have teken a deposit and has done a lot of work and should have invoiced me... he simply hasnt and it now gets to look like desperate attempts to get the order, I already told him I wasnt going to look for someone else and he would have the information when I had time.
This morning I recieve another email stating that he should or may be invoicing me for his "design work " to date and he is cancelling the job off his system and would require full payment up front before going ahead with the order.
I find this all completely ridiculous , the guy has lost an order because he couldnt wait and sent multiple complaining and now threatening emails. I have never dealt with a business card/flyer supplier like this previously.
At the end of the day if I am not happy with the proofs and he is unable to provide proofs that I am happy with there is no order.
I produce multiple plans for customers on a daily basis and until the they are happy with the plans there is no order - the plans are produced to get the order.
If he had either produced a proof I was happy with or just waited until I had time to go through it and work out my own layout he would have the order, but I am now pretty sure I will go with another printer purely due to the silly emails.
The really daft thing for him is that I drafted all the required changes on Wednesday afternoon and just needed to put them in an email and send them over to him over the weekend.
Edited by hedgefinder on Friday 7th October 11:49
Was expecting either a possessed Christine-like entity in a printer threatening you, or a neighbor connecting to a wireless printer and sending jobs out with threats. 
Back at college during computing classes one of my classmates may or may not have had a bit of a laugh by using a port sniffer to find ip addresses with unsecured netbeui or netbios something shares, and a shared printer. He would find out someones name from their documents, then send a text document to their printer saying "i know what you have been up to dave smith" or whatever their name was. Would have been fun to see the reaction. I hope firewalls have come on a bit since the 90s.
OldGermanHeaps said:
Back at college during computing classes one of my classmates may or may not have had a bit of a laugh by using a port sniffer to find ip addresses with unsecured netbeui or netbios something shares, and a shared printer. He would find out someones name from their documents, then send a text document to their printer saying "i know what you have been up to dave smith" or whatever their name was. Would have been fun to see the reaction. I hope firewalls have come on a bit since the 90s.
There used to be a routine that you could use to send messages to the screen on an HP CLJ3600. My favourite was "I'm hungry, feed me".matchmaker said:
OldGermanHeaps said:
Back at college during computing classes one of my classmates may or may not have had a bit of a laugh by using a port sniffer to find ip addresses with unsecured netbeui or netbios something shares, and a shared printer. He would find out someones name from their documents, then send a text document to their printer saying "i know what you have been up to dave smith" or whatever their name was. Would have been fun to see the reaction. I hope firewalls have come on a bit since the 90s.
There used to be a routine that you could use to send messages to the screen on an HP CLJ3600. My favourite was "I'm hungry, feed me".Well, I used to work with HP Unix X-Terminals. You could send messages to another user's terminal, so, the morning after the above X-Files episode, I sent a fellow X-Files aficionado the message "KILL THEM ALL. DO IT NOW". He jumped a bit when the message box flashed up...
Both at fault here I feel. He failed to get an email trail and agreed price for the work upfront - what is to be done and what it will cost, payment terms etc he also didn't specify number of amends permitted essentially setting himself up for a shafting.
But in fairness you should have checked their site to see what the quality of their work was like. As a general rule you're never going to get particularly good creative design and copywriting from a printers. Also just because you are happy to do lots of spec work to secure a client (where a contract may be worth several thousand - I'm guessing here) doesn't mean that the printer is happy to do this for a £150 business card order.
Anyway he will have to suck it up I think.
But in fairness you should have checked their site to see what the quality of their work was like. As a general rule you're never going to get particularly good creative design and copywriting from a printers. Also just because you are happy to do lots of spec work to secure a client (where a contract may be worth several thousand - I'm guessing here) doesn't mean that the printer is happy to do this for a £150 business card order.
Anyway he will have to suck it up I think.
hedgefinder said:
As I didnt get anything I shouldnt have to pay for anything, pretty simple really..
But would the printer agree, or would he say you're an awkward customer who's never satisfied?Can't you send him some examples of how you'd like it to look and agree to sort it out later?
Spoonman said:
But would the printer agree, or would he say you're an awkward customer who's never satisfied?
Can't you send him some examples of how you'd like it to look and agree to sort it out later?
I hardly think so as he only altered a little of the wording and very little of what I actually said I didnt like.Can't you send him some examples of how you'd like it to look and agree to sort it out later?
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