We received a rush order late yesterday for some plastic cards. The customer emailed the artwork over and said a usual it is a rush order.

We are very cautious with rush orders because if issues arise there is precious little (if any) time to fix them but we, as always do our best

The customers artwork was not sent to the correct specification. Our studio advised him of this and then proceeded to fix the issues as quickly as possible (exactly what we do not need with a rush order)

We then emailed a photo-realistic proof to the customer for approval.

He received it and approved it.

Today we received the following email – he approved the email proof on his mobile phone!

ARGH!

PLEASE USE A PROPER COMPUTER TO VIEW YOUR PROOFS ON

Hi,

Back home and on proper computer now.

I expect it’s too late in the day to do anything about it, but I just noticed on the proof mock-ups you sent over that the black boarder surrounding the front image and the back images appears larger than on the examples I sent through.

I sent through an example multi-image which showed how the cards should look when cut-out, and then individual “master” images where I had cleaned up the boarder and left a touch more bleed.

I just want to check that you are using the master images, and scaling them down in size to match the example cut-out images.

If it’s too late in the day, then don’t worry and I’ll go with what looks like the slightly wider boarder shown in your mock-ups. BUT, if we do have time then may be you could check this for me. (but if you need to fix slightly, please res-down from master files rather than expand the smaller files you may have created in order to preserve the crispness and clarity of the text and images.)

I hope the above makes sense !

Best wishes,

We are now trying to decide what to do with the order as we don’t want to print it and dispatch it to the customer if they won’t be happy with it.

He doesn’t have time for a postal proof due to his deadline which would ensure all is ok with his cards.

Do we proceed with the order or cancel it and refund the customers money in full?

Before you decide which company to order your plastic cards from with your hard earned money, try searching for them on Google by doing the following:

Type into Google:

their company name review

e.g. cpcards review

or

their website address review

e.g. www.cpcards.co.uk review

or

their website address problem

This way you can see what other people say about the company.

Also try emailing the company with a question and see how quickly they reply.

We at colour plastic cards (cpcards.co.uk) pride ourselves with offering a high quality service combined with high quality plastic cards and cringe when we see other companies ripping off customers.

Please be wary especially if the price is very low – it will be for a reason – no matter what the website ‘promises’

Hello all,

I am glad to say that the adverse weather conditions over the weekend have not affected us and production times for all products (full colour plastic cards, frosted cards, satin black cards all remain the same as usual.

On a separate note, to any of our readers who have been affected by flooding etc, we hope that everything is back to normal for you as soon as possible.

If anyone has any particular queries in relation to time frames e.g. a tight deadline, please email letting us know your full requirements e.g. product, quantity, any optional extras and latest date you can receive them and we will get back to you asap.

Bye for now

Hello all,

Just a quick message to let you know that if you require a QR code on your full colour solid plastic cards this does not cost extra. Some companies have been charging more for this but assuming you are supplying print ready artwork with the QR code as part of the artwork there is no extra cost to you.

People often use QR codes to give easy access to a website and are often used on business cards and membership cards.

You can see a little more information on QR codes on our optional extras list here

Any questions just pop us a line.

Hello All,

It has been brought to my attention that one of our competitors is still offering “plastic cards” with cardboard in the middle known as card core and the advertising is not 100% clear that this product is produced this way.

Just to clarify, we do not produce card core cards, ours are plastic all the way through.

I have attached a photo of a card core card which shows you the poor quality after a relatively short period of time.

Ask yourself this question, would you want to give this card and bad impression out to a customer?

Please let us know if you have any experience of card core cards and what you thought of them and please be careful if you find some apparently low cost plastic cards and double check exactly what you are getting or better still order from us and have peace of mind.

Bye for now.

Hello all,

We received an unusual email today:

Hello CPcards team,

I’ve on idea about business card but cant find any information if it possible to produce it technically.

The idea is to have plastic card with frozen finish and to have nothing on it , but details of the company appears only after you put the card under water or any other liquid.

Would love to hear from you asap.

We replied straight away, saying that unfortunately this is not something we can help with. Obviously we produce the frosted plastic cards but nothing like the above request.

I was just wondering if anyone else has heard of any unusual requests for business cards / plastic cards?

Bye for now

Hi All,

Last week we had a absolute nightmare, despite waiting for payment for an order of 8000 760 microns thick membership cards with a matt finish for approx 3 weeks the customer comes on saying we will have payment in about 3 working days and can they have delivery in two working days guaranteed! erm short answer is no, not enough time.

We did out best to assist and really pulled out all the stops, this was probably the mot stressful order this year to date.

It was also very difficult as more than one person was contacting us in regards to the order.

Any how we finally got there and I emailed over the order confirmation letting them know it has gone to print and now changes were not possible.

To my absolute amazement this evening we received an email saying:

Can you hold off on this order if not already started. We need to add another line of text. Please confirm this instruction. Revised text will be sent tomorrow.

Not only was this email from yet another new person, we had already said no changes are possible and they even replied to the email saying this!

Sometimes, some orders are more problematic and take up more administration time than the previous 500 orders … this is one of them!

I will be so glad when this order is dispatched.

Bye for now.

Hi All,

A polite request, please do not order items from us if you are never in to receive delivery of them!

It’s a common sense request however we have had no end of trouble recently regarding an order of frosted plastic cards.

We dispatch the order on the 12th July and after a lot of attempted deliveries by the courier they are now on there way back to us as the courier can not deliver them.

I will have to spend some time tomorrow contacting the courier to see where they are as really they should have been back with us days ago. I really hope they have not been lost.

I am very worried at the condition the cards will be in, after spending nearly a month passed between courier depot and courier van I am expecting the worse.

Fingers crossed they arrive back with us tomorrow and in a good state.

Strangely this customer knows he is hardly ever at the deliver address he provided, so why order them for delivery there!

Bye for now please have your fingers crossed.