Well its the end of the financial year again and we are busy ensuring all invoices etc have been entered into the accounts. We would prefer to be assisting customer with there plastic cards orders however unfortunately government regulations and forms beckon.

Hopefully the year end will not disrupt our working practices too much and we will be up running at full steam shortly.

Lets hope that in the new financial year the economy picks up for all our customers, we wish you all the best of luck (good management goes a long way!)

We have been producing passes for a show for a number of years now, they are a great customer to work with. Anyway, they have recently placed there annual order for plastic cards. The design changed a lot of some of the cards this year and in our opinion they look very professional yet modern. We produced the postal proofs as we do with all new designs and they confirmed that the cards looked great. They are gold passes after all, so really do need to look the part.

We receive a lovely email from the customer in question today which said  ”Just to say thank you for the passes that I received this morning”.

We would just like to say that you are more than welcome, we hope your event goes well and to speak with you next year.

When customers send us their artwork for plastic cards, unlike other plastic card printing companies, we check the artwork to ensure it is to the correct specification and that it will print ok.

If the customers artwork isn’t to the correct specification we either tell the customer this and ask them to send it to the correct specification or if we are able to fix the artwork, we do so free of charge, but we also advise the customer of this – just so they know.

Obviously, it takes time and resources for us to fix customers artwork, full artwork specifications can be found here.

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 recieved 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 efficent 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 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

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 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 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.