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screen printing => General Screen Printing => Topic started by: ericheartsu on February 11, 2014, 07:03:15 PM
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Last week customer comes in, and wants a black on black tultex print. Adamant about it being black on black. Really wants to get into the tone on tone of the design. I advise that might not be the best thing, but if he wants it, we'll do it.
Finish shirts this morning, and an hour later he calls up livid. Says that in certain lights it looks green, but he can't even see his print on it. Says we took to long to print them, so he ordered a second batch (keep in mind we printed within 5 business days, which is quick for us, no charge of course) through someone else. So he brings our shirts in and says that we ripped him off and the quality is so bad on ours that he can't sell them.
our black was straight out of the bucket unisoft black, through a 272 screen. The other shirts, which were perfect were printed most likely through an 86 or 110 mesh.
however, i point out several times that he approved the mock up, which clearly states that the color tone of the tee is lightened, to see the print correctly.
I refuse to refund him, as we did what we were asked for. I told him, i'd re-print an order to his specs at a discount, but that we did what we were asked!
man that ruined an already bad day
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Tone on tone/prints like these are incredibly difficult to communicate. He, quite obviously, had a different idea of the desired end result.
Almost impossible to avoid a press check, and for many cases, not worth it, for most types of folks that want that sort of thing.
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Tone on tone/prints like these are incredibly difficult to communicate. He, quite obviously, had a different idea of the desired end result.
Almost impossible to avoid a press check, and for many cases, not worth it, for most types of folks that want that sort of thing.
I 100% agree, and tired to relay that info in the beg. but we obviously have very different ideas on how it should be done.
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Man that sucks! I know that type of customer all to well, they are just looking for something to complain as out!
We have had pretty good luck when doing a tone on tone black to add either a matte additive or HD clear. Seems to help the print stand out a bit better....
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Man that sucks! I know that type of customer all to well, they are just looking for something to complain as out!
We have had pretty good luck when doing a tone on tone black to add either a matte additive or HD clear. Seems to help the print stand out a bit better....
if we end up reprinting them, i was thinking about adding a puff clear, or the HD clear. but we don't ever print with that stuff. 99% of our customers ask for discharge/wb
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We keep a black on black printed shirt in our front showroom to show people exactly what it will look like. We typically use Union Ultrasoft black printed through a 155 for black on black or we will use Wilflex's HD Clear. Both leave a glossy print that is much more visible than our standard out-of-the-bucket black. Another trick, if using Tultex, is to print them on Coal instead of Black since it is a marginally lighter garment.
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here is another trick to shine up black plastisol a little...throw it under your heat press WITH A TEFLON SHEET cover.... the Teflon sheet will shine up the ink on the dull shirt.
Likewise using a piece of parchment paper will mat the ink through the same process with the different cover.
Either operation will soften up the hand of the ink.
mooseman
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Tone on Tone is tough. Black on black we have done before but I always question it as it really is just not super ideal. I prefer a few shades lighter than black so it shows up a touch better. But customer is always right, right?
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But customer is always right, right?
We do our best to please the customer but a few over the years has me thinking a different way. The customer is always right unless they're wrong!
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We had a customer refuse a job last week that we sent a proof to but apparently they didn't look at it. Simple white print on assorted colors and a certain text part of their logo was dropped recently and nobody told us so we sent them a proof of their logo that we've done for them several different times over the years and they approved it and said run it. Then when they came to pick up they said the text at the top of their logo wasn't supposed to be there. They asked that we eat the cost of the reprint entirely since they would like to keep using us for their screen printing. They spend less than $300 a year with us so we politely declined to reprint their job for free and offered to reprint at a discount and they could buy the misprints if they wanted at our cost. They didn't want to do that even though they didn't do their part of the process and there really isn't much else we could have done.
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It wasn't screenprinting, but a recent customer ordered 6 five by three banners. Customer picked them up, said everything looked great. Next day, she brings them back and says they are too big. So I get out the tape measure and show they are exactly 5'x3'. She leaves and returns later with a banner and says that this banner is the size she needs. We measure it and its 30"x30". She wanted me to redo all six banners at no charge, apparently because although they were the size she ordered, they were not the size she meant. I said, ok, I'll redo the banners for free, but I'm going to have to charge an extra $300 for the mind reading service.
Customers are, at times, the worst part of business.
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If you sent an e-proof with the exact logo, shirt color and ink color and they don't look at it what are we to do? There is a good reason why most all of us send a digital representation of the job for approval. They replied to the email with the attached proof saying everything looked great. I guess we could have put the image into the body of the email so they didn't have to open an attachment? I don't mind doing that if it would help.
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Tone on Tone is tough. Black on black we have done before but I always question it as it really is just not super ideal. I prefer a few shades lighter than black so it shows up a touch better. But customer is always right, right?
The customer is frequently wrong, but his money is always right.
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So far this week we've had 3 instances (not including this one), of clients just approving the mock up with out looking at it or reading it.
Im not sure what else to do. maybe hold their hand a bit, and walk them through it even more and charge it as a premium service.
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Put offensive words or pictures of turds on their shirt. Then ask them to double check.
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So far this week we've had 3 instances (not including this one), of clients just approving the mock up with out looking at it or reading it.
Im not sure what else to do. maybe hold their hand a bit, and walk them through it even more and charge it as a premium service.
This isn't new, but I think that it is increasing with the growth of dumb people, using smart phones for everything. Not only are images tiny compared to a real screen, but many folks don't even scroll down to see an attached image!
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We just had one yesterday. This made it by everybody in the shop, which is almost understandable, but it also made it through Properties and customer approvals. We were literally pulling the second to the last piece off the press when an artist came lumbering out to the floor. He had a comp in his hand and said we can't run it yet. The shirt had Double A Baseball instead of AAA Baseball. There's a 72 piece mistake we eat. The only saving grace is it didn't make it to the customer.
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Worst I ever did was for a powderpuff football t-shirt. I fixed their art and reset the type. Sent a proof and got the sign-off.
Printed over 200 royal, gold and black shirts. The next night I was drinking beer and happened to look over at the stack, and noticed it said "POWDERFUFF". I waited until the next morning to assure sobriety was engaged and double-checked. Yup. POWDERFUFF.
The good news was I discovered it before I'd cut and heat-pressed all of the names and numbers for the back. Had to replace the shirts, but I had time and still made money on the job. I've STILL got a stack of those shirts I'm using as set-ups since 2007.
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I've only had one of these mistakes fortunately. Changed "2nd" to "3nd" instead of "3rd". Made it past me, the client (always send and get approval before, but he missed it), my cousin who was helping, and my wife. I am literally photographing the sample shirt I ran for myself about 10 minutes before the guy is coming to pick them up and look at the photo on my screen and go "oh crap". I was able to match the shirt color and mask it with a little ink to make the "n" look like an "r", but still a pain.
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Mistakes like that are always caught in the last 10% of the run, never on the second shirt. I have a big stack of "Grandfondo" shirts for set-ups. Who knew "Granfondo" only had 1 "D" :P
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Once printed a job on x300 heavy ski jackets...already had a press on logo (which was mostly falling off from last printer.) Had to print the words "sponsored by" above in a horrible zip fold cover thingy...in a small space. So busy messing with jigs and nylobag ink missed the fact that it was spelt "sposored by" a valued client came up and was hesitant to tell me the typo after bragged about my fine print and I showed him the terrible job the last printer had done on the transfer logo.... Thank god it was air dry ink and we scrubbed it off with spirits and over printed it. Wow! Too close.
I think I have insurance for that sort of thing though? I've never had to claim but have vague recollection of my policy having it included? Anyone else have insurance for freak ups?
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Last December had to go to a customer with my head sales guy to apologise for a stupid mistake. (Print guy used a different type of ink, and did not do a wash test, the ink just falls off during the first wash).
During the meeting my sales guy stopped talking and the customer went silent. I could not stand the silence and said "100% it is our fault, not yours. I accept full responsibility. I will cover all cost, I am very sorry for the trouble". Customer tone changed and had a smile ear to ear for the rest of the meeting.
1500 full size print shirts... :-[ :'(...
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The small screen phone thing is rampant. I am almost 60 and can't see for crap on these damm smart-a$$ phones.
How about a discharge job they did not want washed to get the soft hand, were reminded of, then tell you that you did not print discharge? We offer large batch washing as well through our other company.
So let's see. Small screens, no scroll down, approve what they do not look at, forget the caveats on technique and discharge jobs, can't spell to begin with, yep, just another day in the salt mine.
Oh, forgot, how about sticker on dtg noting may need to wash Garment if there is a pretreat shadow, which is on every shirt, but they call anyway, even though they are shown the possibility?
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how come we all have a 6th sense, I have set jobs up ran a few and just stop to check or review even after a proof and have found mistakes, Its really a weird feeling when you sense something is wrong.
Oh and my most embarrassing is "Cananada" day shirts that got to press , luckily printer only did a few before catching it . That one haunted me for years in the shop :)
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i did brown on a royal shirt last year and i was so worried it would get rejected. It didn't thankfully and the customer LOVED them.
It's hard to use your taste on something that is for somebody else, since you never know what they think looks great and really what they are after in a print.
I've never done black on black though.
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funny story about this...
a customer came to me a few weeks ago asking me to print a bunch of shirts for him saying 'Division Chams'
turns out, about 15 years ago, they were celebrating that they were the Division Champs... nobody noticed that the shirts said Division Chams on them until AFTER they passed them out to all their members... ended up becoming an internal joke for them.
They had me print a run of them to celebrate hitting that status again.
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We had a customer refuse a job last week that we sent a proof to but apparently they didn't look at it. Simple white print on assorted colors and a certain text part of their logo was dropped recently and nobody told us so we sent them a proof of their logo that we've done for them several different times over the years and they approved it and said run it. Then when they came to pick up they said the text at the top of their logo wasn't supposed to be there. They asked that we eat the cost of the reprint entirely since they would like to keep using us for their screen printing. They spend less than $300 a year with us so we politely declined to reprint their job for free and offered to reprint at a discount and they could buy the misprints if they wanted at our cost. They didn't want to do that even though they didn't do their part of the process and there really isn't much else we could have done.
You're right Alan, we would do the same. $300 a year can be lost, especially if there is no profit, or worse, a loss.
Steve
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New to posts...funny story for us....we got a customer that needed family reunion shirts. The family was Italian, so they wanted the Italian flag with the family name and year...simple. we printed and delivered. Got a call about a week AFTER the reunion saying it was the best ever and thanked us for converting them to Italian Mexicans! We had unknowing flipped the ink colors during production on the flag...Making it a Mexican flag instead of Italian.lol. Customer thankfully found it to be funny.. so we were safe!
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Our shop never makes mistakes. Ever.
WTF is wrong with you people.
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how come we all have a 6th sense, I have set jobs up ran a few and just stop to check or review even after a proof and have found mistakes, Its really a weird feeling when you sense something is wrong.
Oh and my most embarrassing is "Cananada" day shirts that got to press , luckily printer only did a few before catching it . That one haunted me for years in the shop :)
I would have run with that one! Might be a huge hit :D