Hi All,

We have had a few orders for full colour solid plastic cards with personlisation recently.

In case you are not aware of what this means it is when the customers provides an excel file of variable data to be printed on the cards. Typically this will be a name and membership number but it can be pretty much anything the customer required. The only limit to the personlisation is the amount of text but if it physically fits on the cards we can print it on.

It is surprising how many customers don’t realise that we actually need the excel file when the order is placed. We load the excel file on to the printing plate when the order is placed so that the postal proofs are provided with the personalisation in place.

Unfortunately we have an order which is ready to proceed but the excel file is not ready and may not be ready for some weeks, which is a shame that the customer has concentrated so much on the artwork but does not have the variable data ready. We will obviously ensure the postal proof is dispatched asap for the customer on receipt of the excel file.

Bye for now.

Please don’t waste our time.

Recently we have been having a lot of well, erm, all I can say is time wasters.

Every day we receive lots of requests for photo-realistic proofs or for our free design service on, for example our clear plastic cards, from mainly genuine potential customers.

However, we do get time wasters who enquire about our free design service and our design team then produce a design and email it to them for approval. They then get us to make a number of alterations, which we do promptly and for no charge, then without warning, the person what was previously contacting us, maybe several times a day simple stops contacting us.

We have found it doesn’t matter how many times we email them to politely ask what the situation is, they simply ignore us.

Out of courtesy we would appreciate some sort of reply, even if it is “Please stop contacting me, I no longer want to order the cards”

That is FINE!

At least we know where we stand and can then delete your order/artwork from our system and spend our valuable time focussing on our genuine customers!

argh!!!! rant over!

Hello,

I have great pleasure in announcing a special offer we are currently offering (as of August 2009).

The offer is in relation to our full colour solid plastic cards 760 micron thickness. Prices are as follows:

100 x cards = £97 + VAT

250 x cards = £99 +VAT

Please note: This offer is not available with any optional extras or with a postal proof.

More details on this great offer can be found here

To quality for this special offer all you need to do is email over you finish print ready artwork to the following specifications found here & quote special06 in the subject box/email.

Catch you soon

Hi All.

I have posted a blog recently regarding the bureau personalisation service new webpages. Another addition we have made is a tailored quote form for this service.

If you need a quote for this service we now have a new quote form specifically tailored , please see details here

This quote form specifically mentioned the optional extras that are available with the service, namely,

Signature strips

Metallic gold or silver base cards

Magnetic strips(specifically without encoding)

At this point in time I am afraid that we can not encode the magnetic strips.

The form also asks the customer to clarify how often they wish to submit an excel file and approximately how many new members will be included in the excel file. This enables us to provide a tailors quotation for the customer based on there needs.

We hope that the new quote form helps to make quote requests for this products easier.

Bye for now.

Hello All,

I recently posted blog about our special offer for the 760 micron full colour solid plastic cards.

We have received a large volume of telephone call regarding this offer and people are just asking whether the price is correct. Obviously the offer is a great one and I don’t think people can believe there eyes!

I can confirm that s of August 2009 the price is correct. There is no need to phone and check if it is valid as for all of August we can honer this price (hopefully for longer as well but we will confirm this at a later date).

All you need to do is email your finished artwork over to us and ensure that you have followed our artwork specifications.

Thanks for you understanding on this matter.

Hello All.

Our special offer on the full colour solid plastic cards has definitely interested a lot of people. It really is a great offer and customers can obviously tell this!

Unfortunately a few people have got a little mixed up regarding the offer and seem to think it will include optional extras such as holes or signature strips.

We are sorry but at the moment the special offer does not include any optional extras.

Any optional extras on an order mean that the order takes longer to process and longer to produce. So unfortunately we are unable to offer the special offer prices with optional extras. Some customer have got quite upset over this. We have tried to make the webpage for the special offer clear however if anyone has any suggestions as to how we can take it clearer please do let us know.

We hope you understand & welcome any feedback regarding this area.

Hi,

A customer emailed for a quote today for 250 full colour solid plastic loyalty cards with a signature strip. They attached to there quote request various low quality logos and photos and asked for a price and feedback regarding there ideas.

Unfortunately we are unable to offer free design advice (other than fixed technical issues when customer send over artwork which has in the main been submitted to the correct specification).

We provided this particular customer a quote which clearly stated that it included artwork however we received an email back saying that it was a lot more expensive that the price quote on our website. If we are to get involved with a customers artwork this takes up a lot of valuable time and resources and hence why an additional charge is payable. Customers may consider the artwork charges expensive but please bear in mind that the equipment, software and designers time are all expensive.

We are obviously more than happy to receive finished print ready artwork from customers, see specifications /here, obviously when this is supplied no artwork charges will apply.

Thank you for your understanding on this matter.

We produce plastic cards that have various optional extras.

The picture below is taken from our website which illustrates the various options available.

We are going to update our website shortly to include information about each extra as we have found that customers are often confused on ‘how they work’ often we get ask how a signature strip works.

We hope to make these updates within the next few weeks.

We recently printed a black plastic card with a large gloss black pattern in the background.

When we received the artwork from the customer, we thought it would look good when printed but not this good!

The gloss black ink when printed on a satin black plastic card gives a very subtle watermark type effect. It can be seen more clearly as the card is angled in the light.

We are still amazed by the number of people that try to get free postal proofs from us by claiming that it will lead to a big order. We have heard this story so many times over the years.

We had a customer try to do this today (a Manchester based Design company) and didn’t want to make an order – just wanted a postal proof (finished plastic card).

Customer got rather stroppy and got on his ‘high horse’ and next thing started complaining about everything (its amazing what people do when they simply don’t want to pay)

They were speaking to a member of our staff (Catherine) by asking half a dozen or so questions but never allowing Catherine to answer any. When Catherine could finally get a word in edge ways she said “I would like to answer your questions but you wont let me speak, how would you like me to help you?”

The customer then emailed to say our staff are rude!

We simply deleted his email and proceeded to concentrate on our many many other, polite and respectful customers.

This kind of ‘customer’ we can all do without!