Recieved an extremely bad service with a printing company

HQvhs

I recently ordered 600 Christmas cards with 6 designs from a very large printing company in Dublin city centre on the 31st of October.
I paid an €80 deposit, which was roughly 25% of the price of €342, which I was quoted. As of yet I have not paid him anything else other than the deposit.
However, I have had many problems with him since.
He said they would be printed by the end of that week but it was over two weeks later, on the 15th November, before I got them.
When I did get them, over 70% of the cards were not in any way a decent quality and have to be reprinted which is adding further delay.
Adding to this the fact they were printed on the wrong paper, I wasn't given an invoice for the cards I did take (a small amount), and I only got €500 cards with 5 designs.
The disk I gave him didn’t work because I was not told they were using Apple computers and it was formatted for Windows. I was not told about this though and had I not gone in to see if they were printed on the 10th I would not have found out as they didn't tell me. Instead they just scanned them on and I had to point out that in no way was a black and white image with pencil lines on it acceptable.
One of the images they did print had the bottom and sides cut off and the envelopes I received were not of a Christmas card standard but of a business standard, which is not suited to Christmas cards.
I have emailed the head office of the company in the UK about this and have spoken to someone about it but as of yet I have not recieved any help on this matter from the company.
I believe that the reason I was treated in this way was on account of my age as I am 15 and this is for my Student Enterprise Awards project in Transition Year.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated,
Thanks

Heinrich

They are messers. Macintosh can read PC formatted disks but not the other way round i.e PC will not read a Mac formatted disk.

It also depends on what software you were using! The industry standards are Quark Xpress and InDesign for the layout and Illustrator for vectorial drawing and Photoshop for the photos.

Many printers will accept Adobe PDF files but they cannot edit them so you have to be sure of your layout. A printout is usually supplied by the client.

If the printer was correct he would point out these issues particularly if a young person is involved.

Get your dad to go with you to blow the head off these idiots.

Sponge Bob

Such cack, apples have been able to read disks formatted for PC since the 1980s

Heinrich

Sponge Bob wrote:

Such cack, apples have been able to read disks formatted for PC since the 1980s

That's true but I think our young friend was misinformed by the printer.
We will have to see what software he was using as therin lie many issues.

Let's say, for argument's sake he was using Microsoft publisher the printer will not have this PC monstrosity on his shiny Apple Mac! The way to submit the project would be to convert the file to PDF. Has the lad done somethhing along these lines?

HQvhs

i wasn't aware that apples can read pc formatted disks. I was using Macromedia Fireworks but I converted the files from .png to .tiff. The printer was using Paintshop Pro to edit them.

Sponge Bob

thats a PC package FFS and there were no font substitution problems if you gave a tiff bitmap file instead of a vector file like quark where pc and mac font fun could ensue

small claims court if you bought these as a person not as a company

HQvhs

but what standing do i have if i took the cards that were reasonably ok back with me? am i still entitled to have my problem sorted out? I haven't paid yet but I am going back in tomorrow morning.

antoinolachtnai

You have 25 percent of the cards you ordered, and you paid 25 percent of the total value, right?

Personally, I would cut my losses and find another printer as quickly as possible. Don't pay that guy any money. If he comes back looking for the rest, just tell him you couldn't wait any longer and you had to get them printed somewhere else.

eth0_

Isn't paint shop pro a little....amateur for a professional print shop??

They sound like they haven't a clue, cut your losses and go elsewhere.

HQvhs

well I got it semi-sorted today. I met with an executive from the company by coincidence and he said they would put it through official complaints procedure etc etc... but it would take a few weeks so I don't hold much hope for that. However he did say he would personally contact the owner of the branch on monday.
However i went to the print shop afterwards and collected my cards and would you believe it, but the printer had messed up quite a few of the "fixed" cards! I thought this was outrageous seeing as he knew I was going to check every last one of them in the shop. Anyway, after I had organised them inot yet another bad pile and good pile, I asked the printer what I owed him and he said, unbelievably, the balance of €262. I then told him that I would not pay him full for a shoddy job and he got slightly uppity at me and said that I had said I had no problem with the service. Unbelievable considering I had pointed out the messed up cards last time I was in there.
anyway I said I wouldn't pay any more than €120 and he reluctantly agreed but then didn't give me a reciept until I asked for one.
Hopefully that's this saga over and now I can sell them and raise the money for charity like I was supposed to.
This really has been unbelievable as this company is supposed to be the biggest printing comapny in the UK and Ireland.

TempestSabre

Sounds they they don't know what they are doing tbh.