We offer a sample pack free of charge to customer who have received a quote for plastic cards and wish to place an order.

We feel it is important for customers to be able to assess the quality of the plastic cards before they place an order. In additional some trade customers need samples to show there customers – in which case we are more then happy to post out unbranded sample cards.

The sample pack also ensures that the customer selects the right product for their needs. For example quotes may have been provided for the 420 micron plastic cards and on receiving the sample pack customers often decide that the 680 micron plastic cards are more suitable, as it is thicker and provides a more professional image.

We have found recently that we are receiving more and more request from people who simply want samples. These people do not seems to be interested in receiving a quote. We are thinking that people who are just looking for samples are merely looking for design ideas and are phoning a number of companies in the industry looking for ideas/free sample cards. In these cases we are apprehensive to post samples out as they do take time and money to prepare. In addition to this how can the customer know that they wish to place an order with us if they don’t know our prices! Quite often they do not even know how many cards they wish to order or simply don’t want to place an order at all, they are just looking for anything free that they can get there hands on!

Our website does show many photos and even video clips of previous designs we have printed and we are obviously fine for customers to peruse our website at there leisure.

It may unfortunately come down to charging for sample packs, not to make any additional money, just to cover the cost of them. We really don’t want to go down this route however the expense of producing sample packs is high and the return from producing and posting them is relatively low. One option may be for us to charge a nominal amount and refund this should an order be placed.

We are looking to update our website with more photos to help potential customers.

Any ideas to help this situation would be appreciated.