Hi All,

The following message was presented to us at the bottom of a quote request for 100 x 760 micron full colour solid plastic cards with no optional extras:

“I am looking for a 1 sided plastic card in black and white including my logo which is in jpeg photo format at present and personal details in cool text. is this possible to design and show me the design before I order. I would be happy to pay a deposit and then order if i am satisfied.”

Not really sure what to say back yet, we make so little profit on 100 cards that the admin costs to arrange deposits etc would outweigh the profit in the job.

Will have to have a think about this one.

Bye for now.

Hi All,

We reading the newspaper today and came across an interesting article which I thought I would share with you all.

Have you heard of 3d printers, apparently they are very common and help in the production of metal and plastic products, I assume packaging, toys, well probably just about anything if you think about it.

One of these machines how now been designed for chocolate….my favourite!

This machine would be great for wedding favours or personlised gifts on birthdays / mothers days etc. Apparently it will even be able to make 3d faces…different!

How about 3d business cards…erm..perhaps not..how would they fit in a wallet or purse.

Bye for now and hope you are looking forward to eating your own chocolate face.

Hi All,

For a long long time we have not taken cheques as payment for plastic card (membership cards, business cards etc) orders due to the inconvenience of them, e.g. take the bank take to clear them, postage time, or lake of postage time i.e. them getting lost in the post, trip to the bank, delay in processing customers order – think you get the message.

I noticed whilst out and about that a lot of companies have stopped accepting cheques, Sainsburys, Tescos and the like.

On the news today it mentioned that cheques will not be scrapped. A rumor was heard a while back that by 2018 they would no longer exist however now they will be around as long as they are in use.

I must admin that about once a year a write a cheque by I’m sure the company I pay could accept bacs if they really wanted to.

Bye for now happy cheque writing!

We have received some lovely emails recently from a customer who has ordered some frosted clear plastic cards, just one of his emails are below:

Wow! It’s fabulous! I have checked it, and it is fine. The text is fine, the QR code scans fine. All is great! 🙂

Just to be clear, I approve the email proof and please proceed with the order.

I say again, Wow!

I am very, very impressed 🙂

All the best,

What a breath of fresh air to receive such a lovely email. Thank you.

Hi all,

We received a quote request / email today which said:

Please could you provide me with a quote for some loyalty cards the specification is:

5000 printed in full colour to both sides

Flat Numbered (not embossed)

2 x Signature strips

and a Magnetic strip – the customer has no data, does this mean they encode the cards themselves?

I just though a would post a quick message about this request, we obviously produce this specification but the final question should be one asked to the customer not us!

We produce cards with magnetic strips all the time, sometimes we encode, sometimes the customer does, sometimes they are never intended to be used & are just for effect and sometimes they are to future proof the cards in case they decide to use them in the future.

Its best to ask the end used what they plan to do as unfortunately we can not second guess this.

Bye for now

Hi All,

We have had some curious communication from someone recently.

Rather than copying and pasting all the emails I will briefly summarise the correspondence.

The enquiry was for full colour solid plastic cards, specifically requesting Pantone colours and saying how important it is to get the colours right.

We replied saying we do not print with Pantone colours (we print using a CMYK process) and we can not offer colour matching.

The person proceeded to say to go ahead anyway, we assumed they had changed there mind about the colours being important (quite a few customers do this) and proceeded to let him know how to proceed with his order.

We received an email back asking for a free postal proof. We replied saying this is not possible (the postal proofs not to mention the order administration itself obviously take us time and money to produce). This person then phoned up, to go through what had already been discussed via email, they were told the same things again, we do not colour match, we do not print in pantones and we do not offer free postal proofs, the next email we received was even more curious:

“I dont know if you are aware but this lady xxxxx is messing with people big time.

It looks like she doesn’t care about your business, No is her main answer and when I finally speak to her and try to explain what I need she just hung up.Bravo.”

In reply to your email:

1) I am not messing with people big time, I am simply telling you what we can and not not do – this is called honesty. I could fib and promise the world however I am not like this and prefer not to accept your order rather than lie and upset you later down the line.

2) I do indeed care about the business, please refer to answer one above. Perhaps not offering free postal proofs shows how much I care for the business, as I know we can not offer what you want so why waste the companies money by producing one.

3) Regarding my main answer being no, again I know what we can and can not offer, I am just being honest.

4) I did not hang up, the telephone conversation was over and you even said bye. I personally felt the telephone conversation was not constructive as I was just repeating my previous email correspondence (how does this help anyone).

So to conculde, what should we have done in this situation, lied to you, promised you the world and then let you down. Well sorry this just isn’t how we work.

Good luck with other companies, some who will probably fib to you and will frustrate you after you have committed to a order.