Hi All,

Did you hear about the hole in the wall which decided to eject free money to users. When someone asked for £10 it gave £20, probably more likely they asked for £500 and got £1000! The machine is or more likely was used by Bank Machine Ltd. I’m guessing it has been put in to retirement now!

It happened in Dundee in Scotland. Coincidentally a repeat customer phone up just a few minutes after I read this article and mentioned that they were there when this happened, they did not have any bank cards with them so could not benefit from the error.

The bank much have records of who withdrew cash and be able to contact them to ask for it back? Really not sure what happens in these circumstances, if you know please tell us?

Anyhow the repeat customer who phoned up wanted full colour solid plastic cards which looked similar to bank cards, they are actually for use as a business card but they are in the baking industry and thought they may go down well with colleagues / in meetings. We happily obliged.

Bye for now

Hi All,

It has been greatly reported in the news that the UK economy has decreased by .5% when a growth percentage was expected.

Well I’m no economist but the VAT rise is / has affected people views on spending, if the government want people to spent why increase the VAT rate!

We have encountered a small growth in the number of enquiries for plastic membership cards, I’ve probably said this on a few occasions before and will most probably say again – membership cards are a positive way to ensure a member feels valued or even better a discount card offer 5% or more off products/services valid until xxx to try and encourage cash flow.

I wish you all the very best of success in these uncertain times, if you feel any of our products will help your business please get in touch.

Bye for now

Hi All,

I have noticed recently that a few customers have being trying to stop production of there order after approving there postal proof (this relates to the full colour solid plastic cards).

We hate to upset customers however once the postal proof has been approved the order is immediately sent to production and the manufacturing process is started asap. We do make this as clear as possible however not sure what else we can do, any suggestions would be appreciated.

We did consider not sending orders to production immediately on approval by the customer however this obviously is not fair as some customers require the cards asap. Its also surprising the amount of time after approving the postal proof some customers enquire about changing the artwork, this can be days!

Please could we ask all customers to double and triple check both the email and postal proof before approving it.

Many thanks

Hello All,

I received a marketing email today from a well known online market retailer which mentioned about deals for black Friday.

I was curious as to what Black Friday is as I have never heard of it before. I found out that in the US this day is traditionally the start of the Xmas shopping period.

The date for Black Friday this year is this Friday!

So now the traditional Christmas shopping time is nearly here, please have another think about you plastic card orders and look to place them well before Christmas.

The frosted and satin black cards take a little longer than the full colour plastic cards to produce, so have a careful ponder about your requirements now before it is too late to order.

Bye for now.

Hello All,

I was slightly amused and upset today and though I would share this with you.

We, as a company, have spent a long time developing our email proofs to give as much of an impression as we can to creating a photo realistic impression from a computer generated image.

Today we had a customer requiring our satin black plastic cards and we received a reply regarding the email proof saying how ridiculous it was! No explanation of why the customer felt this. After years of developing out proofs we felt a little upset to say the least!

Do you think our proofs are ridiculous and if so why?! Feedback as always is greatly appreciated.

Bye for now.

Dear oh dear, what a day!

We officially close at 5pm however its gone 6pm and I am still here!

I was specifically waiting for a customer to place an order for full colour solid plastic cards which are desperately needed for next week. It was only a small order of 100 cards but we like to please where we can.

Any how, the artwork came through and it wasn’t…artwork that is. Ok slight exaggeration, we could print from it but the quality was poor, we being an honest company, told the customer the quality was poor and explained that we could use it but asked if it to be re-sent in a higher quality or we could quote to recreate it for them.

The customer seem amused as our website says we fix technical problems free of charge. We do indeed fix technical problems, where we can, but for this artwork to print good quality it needed completely re-creating from scratch, not just fixed!

The customer was not happy to pay any additional cost for our design team to work on HIS artwork and did not want us to use HIS artwork in the quality he had sent it to us in! So end result was…he cancelled the order!

We really do try our best for customers, even for tiny little orders where there is hardly any profit but what could we have done differently in this situation?

Perhaps we should not advise that the artwork is poor quality. If we had done this we would now have the order and I would probably be on my way home. Unfortunately we are HONEST and we just don’t work like this. Unfortunately I think this is why we loose a lot of orders to our competitions, as we are honest where some of them are not!

Ah well, I am off home in 10 minutes.

Can anyone suggest any advice in this situation?

Bye bye

Hi All,

A customer phoned me today saying that the email proof for our full colour solid plastic cards, that they had received was not very clear, I asked for there contact details and could not see we had sent a proof. I enquired what email address the proof had been sent from and it was not from our company!

I explained that the company who had sent the proof is known for poor quality work and suggested she typed in the company name and word review in to google search and see what she finds!

Shortly after this conversation the order was placed with us. We sent our good quality proof (perhaps i’m a little bias!) and this was approved straight away and we are now in the process of producing the customers postal proof (something this other company did not offer).

Please be careful of low cost plastic cards, actually anything which is low cost. As a general rule of thumb low cost = low quality and you get what you pay for.

Ta ta for now

Oh dear, we had yet another phone call today from a membership office secretary who has been let down by a low cost plastic card printer who outsources to another country.

They were promised there new membership cards for this weekend as they have an important launch event. Thousands of pounds has gone in to this event, food, decorations, staff, the list goes on.

The secretary phoned this other company and asked for a progress report and unfortunately they have not even been printed yet, let alone left China on the long journey to the UK, so there is no way they will be getting there cards from this company by the weekend.

The secretary phoned us and explained the situation, her full order from this other company was for 10,000 cards but it turns out they only need 1000 for the launch event for V.I.P members. We came to a compromise that we would deliver the 1000 on Saturday morning and the balance to follow within 7 working days.

I just feel sorry for her that she now has to try and get her money back from this other company and reading reviews on the internet she will struggle with this.

At least we have done everything we can to help her 🙂

The end result is that we have made this ladies day or more likely month!

I posted a blog recently about a customer who was contemplating ordering with a company who produces there cards in China. Well they are indeed very glad that they decided to order with us!

There order was for a calendar card on a full colour solid plastic 760 micron plastic. Well we went through the usual route of email proof and then postal proof, on reviewing the postal proof the customer realised that one of the months had two dates missing from it!

The customer submitted new artwork and we are currently in the process of producing the second postal proof.

If this customer had ordered with the company who produces cards in China they would be stuck with 250 cards all with a calander on which they could not use as it was incorrect.

Order your full colour solid plastic cards with us and receive a proofing system which includes a double check proofing system e.g. the postal proof.

It really is amazing how many customers submit there own artwork. approve the email proof, receive the postal proof and then and only then realise there is a mistake!

Makes do happen by the best of us, we at Colour Plastic Cards just try to eliminate the chance of mistakes as much as possible for you.

Hi All,

What a frustrating day.

A customer came on to us a week or so ago wanting some satin black plastic cards with two ink colours quantity of 200. We prepared a couple of emails proof for him with slight variations at his request and he approved the email proof and confirmed he wanted to order 200 cards. We processed his payment and order and started the first steps in the manufacturing process e.g. ordered the printing plates.

The day after the order has been placed the customer emailed to say he wants to increase the order to 500 cards, well we were literally about to print his order (we order the printing plates on a next day delivery service) so this was going to cause problems as we could not hold up production whilst waiting for him to confirm the quantity increase/price increase. We emailed back the cost to increase and said we needed to know in the next hour, we heard nothing so phoned on both landline and mobile numbers but there was no answer.

Eventually the customer phoned us back to say he wanted to go ahead but unfortunately the first ink on his job had been printed and second ink was set up and to set up the machine again for the first print would disrupt the production process.

Unfortunately the customer could not see the problem at all and still wanted to upgrade the quantity, I kept saying that it was not possible but he got very cross with me and say he would not order any more cards from us.

I do feel sorry for the customer but if he had ordered 500 in the first place there would be no problem or if he had got back to us in the time period we asked him to it would have been ok.

I think he was so cross as the price difference between 200 cards and 500 cards is not a lot different however we do make our pricing very clear, it is even included on the actual email proofs and he had of mentioned earlier about the increase it would have been ok.

This customer is very cross with us but realistically what more could we have done, the customer told us what quantity he wanted to order, we make out prices as clear as possible and we gave him chance to upgrade the quantity.

Any suggestions on a post card to Po Box……….!

Unfortunately I feel that we have lost any future orders from this customer but I do not feel it is our fault – thats life I guess! We obviously wish him all the best with another supplier in the future, perhaps he will think a little harder about which quantity to order in the future, just a shame we are penalised as he did not do this for us.