Recently one of our long term repeat customers found ‘cheaper’ plastic cards from one of our competitors and because of the lower prices they had to order plastic cards from them so they could pass the saving onto their client.

However, today this customer returned to us and said the following:

Hello Paul,

We have been using them at the request of our client and to be totally honest with you they are rubbish, as well as their service. You tend to get what you pay for I guess. However, for this quote their client has already had cards from you (via us) so is used to the higher quality cards that you produce.

I will be providing prices of both companies and letting the customer decide.

Many thanks,

David

So it does go to show you that lower cost often does also mean a lower quality product with poor service.

Its been a busy day again for plastic card enquiries.

An amusing incident happened earlier today. We had a customer phone us earlier chasing delivery of their plastic cards, they did not seem to be able to locate their order number (we provide order numbers to all customer so that we can easily monitor their card order). I then asked for the invoice number however this did not seem to be one of our invoice numbers.

I then asked the company name on the invoice and it turned out they had ordered the plastic cards from elsewhere – much to this persons embarrassment!

This customer had received a quote from us however our price was a little more than another company, so they went with this other company. Speaking to this person a little longer on the phone revealed that they will be ordering the plastic cards from us next time due to failed promises from this other company, there were expecting delivery of their order today however it unfortunately does not look like this will happen and they will not have their plastic cards for an important event tomorrow.

Please remember that, as with most things in life, you get what you pay for & if something seems too good to be true it probably is!

Colour Plastic Cards offer a honest yet quality service and product.

Last week I wrote a blog saying that a Chinese plastic card printing company had stolen images from our website to include on theirs.

We get this a lot from new companies in the industry that are either lazy or don’t have the ability to take their own photographs of plastic cards for their website.

Anyway, after repeatedly harassing/nagging the Chinese plastic card company, they have finally removed my images from their website.

However, they have not apologised!

I will continue to keep my eye on them as well as other new companies to ensure my images remain solely on my website.

Hello All,

I mentioned earlier in the week about a rush order for plastic cards for a car company . Well I have pleasure in announcing that we have managed to produce their plastic cards one day quicker than expected and the order should be delivered tomorrow.

We are obviously reliant on the courier company playing there part but all going well the customer should have plenty of time to transport the cards abroad for the motor show.

It’s always nice when we are able to help customers, sometimes the plastic cards can make or break deals for people, especially if they relate to a membership schemes and need to be given to new members at an open day or event (sorry I am waffling a little as the cards for the car company were not actually a membership card!).

Anyhow I just though I would let you know that this order has been despatched with time to spare and that if you need plastic cards in a hurry it may well be possible, please just ask & we will see what we can do for you.

Bye for now.

Hello all,

It’s been a busy day again today. It has been hard work today as some customers have been communicating with us via more than one email address and then come to order our plastic cards, so they fill out our online order form but use a completely new email address. It’s very hard to tie things together when this is done! We did however get there in the end!

If you place any orders with us please please please could you use just one email address?! It sooooo much easier for all concerned!

I know that here at Colour Plastic Cards we in the past had loads of email addresses for different departments, however we soon learnt that this just confused our customers. We now just have one email address which is sales@cpcards.co.uk this way everyone knows which email address to use. Its then up to us internally to divide the work, at least this way we have to do the work and the customer does not have to worry about whether their email will go to the correct department.

Bye bye for now

Hello all,

Week in week out we receive compliments from customers who purchase our plastic cards, recently we have received a lot of positive feedback surrounding our response time to plastic card quote requests. We do try our very best to reply to all quotes very quickly.

The best way for a customer to request a quote if via our online quotation forms. This way we can fully understand the optional extras which are required.

I think that some customers may be put off completing the form as it asks for a contact telephone number. I would like to assure everybody that this telephone number will only be used should an emergency situation exist, for example if a customer has placed an order for plastic cards and the courier is struggling to delivery the order and this is the only phone number we have not tried, then we will use it as our mission is to ensure your order is delivered as timely as possible.

We are not the kind of company to phone up and pester potential customers as we do not think this has any advantage for anyone.

We may occasionally email to ask if there is anything we can do to assist with any order, if a customer replies to this email saying they are not interested then we simply do not contact them again. We just ask for a little courtesy and for customers to keep us informed, if for any reason they do not wish to proceed with their order – it’s not a problem, just keep us informed!

Anyhow. this blog started off on a positive note and has ended off in a little bit of a rant! We respect all our customers and hope they will return this to us. We welcome any constructive feedback.

Thank you for reading!

Although our website is informative and provides clear prices for our plastic card products and an online quote request form for the full colour solid plastic cards, some customer still wish to talk though there ideas.

This is no problem at all but can be difficult sometimes to get all the required information correctly.

In addition it can be useful to talk over ideas and help the customer to selected the correct product.

An example of when it can be difficult to take details over the phone is in relation to the customers email address. Occasionally human error will creep in and email address is taken down incorrectly. Its a shame when this happens as quite often 10 mins or more have been spent on the phone discussing the options, another few minutes for us to actually put the quote together and then the customer never receives the quote.

I would recommend to all customers who phone for a quote, just to pop a quick email over as well confirming there email address.

Its surprising how long and complicated some email addresses are!

We occasionally receive phone calls from new and existing customers enquiring about plastic cards with square corners. We have have tried plastic cards with square corners however from a health and safety point of view we consider them to be too dangerous to produce/sell.

As the cards are plastic, producing them with square corners would leave four rather sharp corners which could result in nasty injuries.

We do offer one product with square corners, this is the matt laminated 380 gsm cardboard product. So if a customer insists on square corners this is the optional available for them.

If you are looking to order plastic cards with square corners from a company which does sell this please be careful & remember that the safety of other people should far out weight any benefits you feel are gained from square corners.

Our plastic cards come with 3mm radius corners as standard (same as a credit card) and we feel that as well as being safe by not having four sharp corners that look the most professional with the radius corners.

We like to think that our website is informative and geared up to assist our customers as much as possible. Our website clearly shows all the products we offer, namely:

Frosted plastic cards

Satin Black plastic cards

Metallic plastic cards

Full colour solid plastic cards (3 thicknesses available)

Key tags

We offer example prices on the website for the satin black, frosted, metallic and matt laminated cards. The full colour plastic cards have so many optional extras that we feel it is not practical to include prices on the website, we do however offer a prompt online quote request service.

I would say that most quotes are replied to within 5 to 10 minutes however at busy times this can be longer. A lot of our customers think we have an automated quoting system as we often provide so quickly however I can assure you that we physically put each one together ourselves.

For the products which have prices available on the website we do not have a separate quote form however if customers feel they can not define their quote online they are free to email us and we will reply very promptly. Often it is useful for the customer to submit there artwork so we can assess the best product for them.

Our href=”/quotation-request/”>quote request forms have been developed over a number of years and I guess they will be adapted more in the future when we realize things that can be worded or done in a better way. If any one has any comments in relation to the quote request forms please fell free to let us know.

Last week it was brought to my attention that a plastic card company based in China has stolen images from our website to include on their website.

I found it rather odd, that a plastic card company would do this, as you would think that they would have their own plastic cards to hand to photograph and add to their website, but obviously not!

Maybe they are conning people?

We have sent them several polite emails asking them to remove our images from their website but as yet they have not done this. I very much doubt that they will.

The funny thing is, one one of the pictures, it is my own hand holding the card, so at least I can prove it is my picture – “look, those are my finger prints!”

Be warned!!!