When I told my friend Ralph Mittman from PrintPost late last year that I was going to open a print shop again, he told me to stand still while he hit me in the head with a 2×4. “Don’t do it, you’ll regret it,” he cautioned. I ignored his advice, but I think about it every time I have an unpleasant dealing with a customer. In the last three months, we’ve had three projects that didn’t go as planned on the customer’s part, but as the printer we end up paying the price.
Our first bad customer experience was printing 5,000 bumper stickers for someone that needed the job overnight. It ran on some litho vinyl paper, which in itself ran pretty well since it wasn’t a digital stock. Toner adhesion was excellent, blacks were solid, and we delivered the job to the customer, who incidentally was also a printer. He then took the job to another company for UV coating. That company ran the coating incorrectly, and ruined the job. I got a phone call from the printer we sold the job to, and he informed us he was stopping payment on the check. When we asked for an explanation, I told him we would get some of the same sheets (the overs and the QC inspection sheets we were pulling every 100 prints) through a TEC Lighting UV coater and provide him with proof that the error was with the company he sent the job to for UV coating. Our sheets came out great. But the printer still refused to honor the check.
Our second problem job came from the customer, who provided a PDF of the file she needed printed. We made a digital proof of the piece imposed with our Dynagram inp02 software and sent it to the customer to approve. She signed off on it, and we printed it. After delivery, the customer claimed the rack cards were cut crooked, and oh, by the way, since we would need to print it again she wanted a change in the artwork because she left a dotted line in the artwork and it shouldn’t have been there. When we told her that she had signed off on the proof, her response was that we should have caught it (as though we were the artist) and therefore, she would not pay for the job unless we did it again with her changes at no charge. Since she could not use the original print job, I went to pick it up but alas, they were already disbursed to the racks they were intended to go in to.
The third was another customer who ordered some printed manuals, wire-o bound, and when she received them, she told the delivery driver (me) that she would call her sales rep to get a deep discount on the order, or ask that he reprint them for her at no charge. I asked her why, was there a problem with the printing. No, she replied, it was better than what she had gotten in the past, but that she used to do the same thing with her other printer and he would discount it. With about 50 printers in town, I guess she has some time before she runs out of printers she can play the same game with…
I haven’t regretted opening the print shop, and certainly not as running it as the Social Print Experiment, but I do get that funny, sick feeling in my stomach when I get to have one of these great conversations with a customer. We’re all struggling to survive in the world, and having to eat the cost of a job or know you’re not going to get paid even though you did everything right, makes me wonder why we do what we do. I can only hope that Karma plays her card for each of these folks, and all of the same folks who do these same things to you, down the road…
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Welcome to the world of printing. In the 15 years I have been in business I have had the three problems that you describe umpteen times. All the same printing business in not the worst business that you can have. So be cheerful and keep on rolling with the punches. Greetings and best wishes.
Have any of these three turned out to be repeat customers? Or were they strangers in the night who docked at your port once and then sailed away?
Good question. Two of them were strangers; one was an acquaintance I knew from another lifetime. And none of them are repeat customers, by my choice. I’m writing a post about that now, incidentally. Not sure what the title of it will be, but it will correspond to the date of this reply.
The strength of your business is always predicated on the quality of your clients.
S.
Welcome to the Print Business. What I learned through the 12 years in the print business is that unless you can build relationships with repeat customers, you will not survive. Stick to it. Don’t be afraid to do favors sometimes. Just be selective.