We have recently found that the majority of people who ask us to send a sample pack of cards, want the samples to look at the cards for ideas for designs.

Unfortunately, our sample packs don’t include many cards as the idea of them is to show the quality and finish of the cards.

So to assist both our customers and potential customers we have created this website which shows many different design examples for all the different card types that we produce.

We hope our customers and potential customers find this this website useful.

We intend to add more images to the website when we get a chance, but we don;t want to add too many as it may easily overwhelm anyone looking through it, we need to find a good balance.

Recently a customer placed an order for 500 frosted cards with blue, white and holoprint ink. We all though that this particular design looked wonderful and without any prompt the customer very nicely emailed the following to us:

“Just received my order from you and everything was perfect even though I have only had dealing’s with your company through e-mail I found your service very professional and efficient and I look forward to using your service’s in the near future.”

Its great to receive feedback and to to hear that they are a satisfied customer.

As always we welcome any feedback positive or negative – we always look to improve things where we can.

Hi all,

I just wanted to let you all know that we can produce plastic cards with holes or slots incorporated into them.

Customers find this useful when the plastic cards need to be hung up, for example some clubs will use them in the clock rooms. Often two sets of cards will be produced, one to give the customer and one to hang over the coat (both cards also have a sequential number printed on them to identify the customer and link the number to the coat).

Other customers use them as badges & use a clip to allow them to be attached to clothes.

We can offer holes and slot on all the full colour solid plastic cards.

Bye for now

We have been using good checkout for over a year to process payment for plastic cards orders. There has been teething troubles and we still don’t consider this the easiest online payment method however due to our adwords account we have benefited from free transaction processing.

However form the beginning of May 2009 the free transaction processing is being abolished and quite an extensive tier of pricing is being implement.

We like to offer our customers as many payment options as possible however the new charges google are planning to implement may rule this option out for us.

We have always thought it unfair to charge customer a surcharge for paying by credit cards however I guess if someone insists on paying via google checkout after May we may have to look at a surcharge.

Just a quick couple of tips for those of you with signature panels / write on strips, who seem to be having trouble actually writing on the strip. The following are reasons we know of:

Reason the pen may not work on the strip: Grease off fingers may cause a layer between the write on panel/signature panel and the pen – basically meaning than the ink can not stick to the strip.
How to resolve the issue: Try to handle the plastic cards with non greasy hands, you may need to wash your hands and try another card.

Reason the pen may not work on the strip: The pen you are using on the strips may have fibers on the end of it from use on laser/photocopied paper. Fiber build up can prevent the ink being released from the pen and/or the pen nib skidding across the signature panel.
How to resolve the issue: Wipe the nib of the pen with a clean cloth and try again

Reason the pen may not work on the strip: Perhaps its not a signature strip / write on panel at all! Maybe the customer never opted for one to be applied to their plastic cards – shame on you!
How to resolve the issue: Order plastic cards with strips in place next time!

Sorry I know that last one may not be very useful but just wanted to make sure you actually consider that this is a possibility!

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.

We can apply signature strips to plastic cards, these provide a useful tool so that members can sign the card. This is a good way for organisations to verify a members identity and also could provide the member a sense of belonging and ownership.

Signature strips are applied to the plastic cards using heat and pressure. This allows them to be written on with a ball point pen.

The signature strips can also be used to write additional useful information on, for example:

Membership number

Membership category

Date of Birth

Expiry date etc

We often refer to the signature strips as “write on panels / signature strips” as it is exactly the same product and material used for both, basically they are one and the same thing.

Customers will quite often have 2 or 3 strips on their cards to space out all the required information. This is fine and most of the time there is no additional cost for this. If you have any particular requirements please run them past us and we will happily provide a quotation.

We had a customer who was desperate to receive there order of plastic cards as they wanted to post them out to attendees of an event.

I phoned the courier company mid afternoon to see if they would be kind enough to provide any kind of update, unfortunately they were unable to do this.

At 5.30 our customer still had not received there order of plastic cards, so I rang the courier company again. This time they informed me that the courier van had been broken into & there would be a slight delay, however the order would be delivered by 6.30pm.

This time came and went and no delivery was made. The next day the courier company contacted us to tell us that our customers order has been one of the parcels stolen from the break in.

This was such a shame for the customer as they really needed their plastic cards.

Lucky the customer had another idea up there sleeve and instead of handing the cards out as pre-event tickets they would actually hand them out on the evening as an information card.

We are in the process of re-printing the cards for the customer and fingers crossed this re-print will be uneventful.

It just goes to show you than the unexpected can and does happen. If you know you need plastic cards for an event, get them ordered sooner rather than later so there is plenty of time for anything unexpected to be resolved. I guess this is true of anything in life not just plastic cards!

I wrote a blog a few days ago regarding a plastic cards order which had been stolen while it was in the couriers delivery van.

This particular order had a deadline and the theft rendered the original design un-usable.

The customer submitted a new design, which meant that the card could still be used. This time however they incorporated a signature panel/write on strip to allow a table number to be written on the cards which would identify the user. We produced the new design with the signature panel/write on strip (we decided not to charge the customer additional money for the strips as after all the theft was not their fault, come to think of it, it wasn’t our fault either however we do try to ensure our customers are happy).

The replacements cards are due to be delivered today – please cross your fingers for us and the customer.

We can offer postal proofs with our full colour solid plastic cards orders (apart from the special offers). There are numerous reasons why we can offer them. Basically the cards when printed and finalized may come out differently than expected. Reasons include:

– Orders with magnetic strips can be tested to ensure they work ok before the full order is printed. Occasionally the proofing stage can highlight problems before the full order is printed.

– The above also applies for barcodes.

– Colours can come out differently then expected when the artwork is printed on to plastic cards.

– A printed proof may highlight any areas of the artwork which have been provided by the customer as proof quality/low resolution. The customer can then decide if they have the ability to provide the artwork in a better quality.
– Optional extras such as embossing can be applied to show the final result, sometimes embossing may cover key text which the customer has not realised previously.

The above are example but highlight the obvious reasons for producing postal proofs.

Most plastic cards companies, often those shipping the cards into the UK from the far East, do not offer postal proofs, I think this is basically because it would take far to long to ship a sample card with the customer artwork on to the UK. Please bear this in mind when ordering cards from a company who does not produce the cards in the UK. Imagine if your full order arrived and it looked terrible or the magnetic strips did not work, I doubt anything could be done.

However, it may not be obvious that some companies are not producing the cards in the UK, i.e. their sales office may be here in the UK, so you need to ask them if the cards are produced here in the UK or if they are shipped in from the far east etc.
Place your order with us and receive your postal proof before we print your full order. This is to ensure full review and testing of any optional extras can occur before you commit to your full order being printed.