Friday, May 22, 2009

Doh



I never win anything and as a result i was delighted when the lovely Solo Lisa contacted me to say I was a winner of a competition on her site. The prize was 250 free business cards of my choice from Bizcard.com. The design, required image size and DPI requirements were double checked with a graphic designer before I placed the order on April 7th. I uploaded the images and info as per the instructions on the site. Timeline? “We guarantee 3-5 days production time on most standard products. Custom orders will be quoted on an as needed basis”

On April 21st I received an email saying that the cards hadn’t printed properly, could I send the images again? No problem. A day later another email arrived asking me to resize the images; even though the originals were sized to the site specifications. Again I did this. And then…nothing. I had to email at the end of April to establish had they received the images and what was the status of the order. I received a reply on May 6th; an apology for the delay-that they didn’t know what had happened but would add some extra cards. I was assured the cards would be printed first thing the following morning.


The cards were delivered May 21st and I was excited to finally (6 weeks after the order was placed) receive them. You can imagine my disappointment upon opening the parcel and finding that the cards supplied were not ”Premium business cards at affordable prices”. The base colour for the card was black but when I picked a card out of the bundle there appeared to be specks of dirt on it. I wiped and looked closer. It wasn’t dirt. Small flecks of colour that almost look like faint scratches and the greyish edging on the corners resulted in some tatty looking cards. More cards picked. Same result.

I rechecked the images that were emailed; there was no evidence of any colour other than black. The images sent were over 600 dpi so I can’t figure out why this resulted in pixelated text. I have emailed them to express my overall disappointment in dealing with them. I now have a load of cards that I wouldn’t dream of giving to anyone as they look like something I printed myself. I have yet to receive a reply.

If a company provides me with a quality service and product i spread the word and let people know. Needless to say due to the lack of clear communication, delays in printing and the shoddy quality of the cards provided, I won’t be a repeat customer at Bizcard.

I think I'll be shopping with www.moo.com in future for my business card needs.

Any suggestions on what to do with 300 unusable business cards?? (apart from the recycling bin)

Image via Striatic

5 comments:

Meadow said...

Some kind of sculpture? Inspired by those houses of playing cards we built as kids. I did one a few years back with hundreds of those plastic rings that hold cans of beer together. Looked great with a light shining through, like a space city. I think.

Dorothy said...

I love my moo mini-cards. They're adorable. And they came in short order and I got status updates every step of the way (image upload successful, order in process, order printed, order shipped).

Green of Eye, Sharp of Claw said...

@Meadow:
Sounds like an idea. Armed with business cards, a bottle of whiskey and an evening to kill....voila! Work of 'art' :)


@Dorothy:
I see from your blog that you're a fellow Bikram convert!! Cheers for stopping by:)

Yeah status updates are great,rather than wasting your (not to mention employees) time emailing to find out what's going on with an order.

Lottie said...

Paper Mache?

It reminds me of the very thoughtful present I bought for my boyfirend a few eyars ago - his very own business cards. I was so excited when they arrived and I presented them to him on ly to be told that I had infact put MY PHONE NUMBER on the card rather than his.


Doh!

Green of Eye, Sharp of Claw said...

@Lottie:

Perhaps i make a mask....
Awww that was such a sweet thing to do(Pffffft numbers.meh!)

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