On Wednesday 12th August 2009 a repeat customer made an enquiry for some more plastic cards that were needed for Thursday 10th September 2009.

We provided a quotation and were told that they needed to wait for approval before sending the order over.

On Friday 21st August we contacted the customer regarding their possible order as we were aware of their deadline and were told that they were still waiting for approval and will be in touch asap.

Today, Monday 7th September, the customer has contacted us wanting to proceed with their order.

Unfortunately, due to current high workload (which is always the case this time of year due to lots of schools, colleges and universities starting the new academic year and requiring their plastic cards)

Our unfortunate reply was:

Thanks for your email, I am sorry but we can not meet your deadline.

Realistically we would be looking at approx. 21st September based on your order being placed and paid for today

Unfortunately there is nothing we can do for you as we are just simply swamped with work.

We could have met the deadline if we had received your order last Monday

Really sorry we cannot help you on this occasion but I do find it is best to be honest

Please just be cautious if you are promised the earth from another plastic card supplier regarding deadline

With all the snow around the UK at the moment it is causing problems with deliveries of some plastic cards orders for some customers, especially those in more remote areas where the roads have not been gritted at all. It is very disheartening for us as we always put 100% effort into every order to ensure it is printed to high quality and on time but we are always at the mercy of the courier companies when it comes to delivering the plastic cards order on time.

The process to order our full colour solid plastic cards can be summarised by the following:

1) Customer emails artwork over to us

2) We provide a photo-realistic proof for checking by email

3) Customer approves the proof

4) We produce a postal proof actual finished card with the customers design on

5) Customers approves postal proof and we print the full order OR new artwork is submitted.

We offer the postal proofs so that customer can review the printing of the cards before we print the whole order. Occasionally customers will notice a typo or other mistake when viewing the postal proofs. Really this should have been picked up before they submitted there artwork to us or even when we send a PDF proof back to the customer to double check. However occasionally it takes until the hard copy proof doe these mistakes to be noticed.

We have noticed that when this happens it is amazing the number of customers who do not want to see the 2nd postal proof, although it took until this stage first time around for the mistake to be noticed. We do politely try to point this out to customers and most times they agree to the 2nd postal proof.

An example of this situation is below which happened this week:

“I collected the proof this morning and noticed that I got one of the telephone numbers wrong on the file I sent you.

I’ve attached a new front for the card which changes the mobile number from 07xxx xxx xxx to 07xxx xxx xxx.

As I am happy with the quality of the cards, I’m happy for you to email me a proof just showing the new telephone number etc (just so I know you’re using the new PSD file and not the old one).”

This customer is having 2nd postal proof!

We just wanted to point out that the proofs are a good idea to have!

We are amazed at how many customers email their artwork to us for their plastic cards and once they receive their photo-realistic proof back, they spot errors on their own artwork.
Below is an email we received this morning from one of our customers who had emailed their artwork to us and then received one our of photo-realistic proofs.
Yes all received

Just making a decision

I have noticed the freephone number is missing and there is a spelling mistake so I will need to send new artwork when we order.

Kind regards

Jane Murray
Sales Co-ordinator

We are glad that they spotted the error before a postal proof was sent to them, it is just a pity that they didn’t check their artwork before they sent it to us as this will save everyone time.

Our most popular product ranges are the full colour solid plastic cards and the foil printed plastic cards. I wanted to briefly touch upon the foil printed cards. The most popular card from this range is the clear plastic cards.

I am note sure that many people are aware of this but the clear plastic cards, satin black plastic cards and metallic plastic cards are all printed using the same printing method.

This is really important to point out, as if you are thinking of starting a membership scheme you could utilise these different base cards to show different member categories, for example:

Frosted clear plastic cards: Standard membership

Metallic Silver plastic cards: For silver members (or perhaps platinum)

Metallic Gold plastic cards: For gold members

Satin black plastic cards: For very exclusive members

Obviously you can organise the different tiers of membership anyway you like and the above is just to give you an idea.

I hope this has given you something to think about. Please drop us an email if you would like a quote.

Hi all,

It has come to our attention that a lot of American companies are advertising clear plastic cards on the internet search engines. I just wanted to point out that we are a UK based company and our cards are produced in the UK.

This means that the production and shipping time for your order is not delayed by the cards having to cross waters or potentially been delayed by customs.

Also remember that we your order goods from America you will also be subject to duty (which I believe is 5%) and VAT (which we would obviously have to apply at the current rate of 15%).

Please come and purchase our clear cards, they are great!

Bye for now.

Hi All,

We received a nice email from a customer today. He had received his order and emailed to say “Cards arrived this morning…perfect…thank you”

The order was for just 100 full colour solid plastic cards 420 microns thick, for a web developer.

Personally I think that the design of the cards (done by the customer) look very classy with a black background and a matt finish. I am glad he is pleased with them.

Thank you for your comments, as I have stated just a few times before, emails from customers thanking us are always nice to receive and more than welcome.

Bye for now.

Hello All,

We have recently made some changes to the website, mainly the full colour plastic card pages, if anyone has spotted any errors with the new web pages or links that do not work, please let me know.

It’s always good to update webpages but there are potential problems which go with this, such as, links on the web pages not working properly.

Any help or suggestions are always welcome.

Catch you soon

Free Artwork Service Available

We are still finding that many customers are making enquiries for our clear business cards which is certainly keeping our design team busy as we offer a free design service for every order.

Have a look at our website and browse through the examples on their showing examples of our work.

We find a popular colour combination is people choosing one ink colour, usually silver, printed onto the clear business card but often customers have multiple ink colours printed.

The example below shows a clear business card printed with two different blue colours and white (3 ink colours in total)

At Colour Plastic Cards we welcome any comments (good or bad) from our customers regarding how they found dealing with us and how happy they are with their plastic cards.

We value all comments, no matter how small, good or bad and we take any customer feedback seriously and and treat any negative feedback as constructive criticism so we can continue to improve our service.

We look forward to hearing from you soon with your comments.

Please email us at sales@cpcards.co.uk or leave a comment below in this blog.

Many thanks

All at Colour Plastic Cards Limited