Dave is due a huge thank you from each and every one of us for the tireless
work he puts into this list and the calendars.
My two cents, if anyone is specifically interested in the printing business
write Dave and Brian privately. Otherwise, I sincerely hope this issue
will stop being mentioned. I don't know sic 'em about printing and I
really don't know who is right and who is wrong, I just think it's a tender
subject.
--Roger van Hoy, '55 DeSoto, '58 DeSoto, '42 DeSoto, '41 Dodge, '66
Plymouth, '81 Imperial, Washougal, WA
PS-- I'd also suggest not writing the list to say I'm right or wrong; I've
been wrong several times already today. One time I thought I was wrong and
I was mistaken.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, October 04, 2004 3:59
PM
Subject: Re: [FWDLK] Calendar Printers
Needed
Hi
All,
Since Brian has said my decription of the printing problems is
'incomplete', I will add a copy of my
letter to the print company (dated May 11, 2003) to the end of this
email. It tells the rest of the story, and I hope this discussion ends
here.
I'm sorry Brian had to bring this up,
since neither Brian's nor the Printing company's name was -never-
mentioned. The reason we did not
have a calendar last year, was I did not want to go through this nightmare
again. That is why I was asking for a printer who would actually conform
to the specific guidelines in that email. The reason I asked for someone
who would specifically stand up to support the printer in the event of any
problems, is because Brian would not.
And as for "resulted in the printer
refusing to do any further business with him", that's actually laughable since
I never approached them with any other print job -- why would I after the last
fiasco?
I'm glad to see Brian passionately support this
printer, but bear in mind he refused to get involved when we were in the
middle of this whole mess?
-Dave
(Faxed
May
12, 2003
12:30
AM to
(***) ***-****)
Dear [Print Shop
Name] :
Enclosed is payment for the 2003 Forward Look Calendar
order.
The amount is less than the amount on the invoice for
several reasons that are enumerated below. We are
considering this payment as payment in
full. Depositing or cashing this
check will constitute agreement to these terms.
Lack of Communication and the
Delays:
On
December 6th before we overnighted M*** H***** the
CD
containing
the final and complete layout of the calendar, we
asked him if it would still be possible to have the job completed by the end
of 2002; his answer was "not a problem".
The CD was mailed December 7th. According to the tracking information,
M*** had the files on December
9th.
Now, if the calendars were a few days, or even a couple of weeks
late, the timeliness would not have been much of an issue. We know the Publisher files CD was
sent rather late, but M*** was
aware of the situation all through November and December. We have his emails that prove
this.
We
also have emails from M*** stating
that they did not
even start looking at the calendar files until January. Never was the delay communicated to
us, nor were any of my phone calls returned during
December.
The
first communications we received about the lateness of the calendar were from
M*** (Jan 4th): “I apologize for not contacting you
sooner. We had
an extraordinarily busy December and I've had some technical difficulties with
Publisher 2002 and our imagesetter system. We plan to have the imagesetter up
and running today and I will be working on the calendar this weekend and with
any luck we will have it on the press next week.”
We both are aware that you had a problem with your presses that
required two days to clean. We
are both also aware that you had difficulties with the color separations. Based on the time from when we were
notified of the separation problems, and the date on which you mentioned the
calendar was on the press, nearly two months went by. We have a difficult time believing
that you worked on this problem all day long for two straight months. It appears as if a job that was
already late was “put on the back burner”, making the completion date even
later still.
I gave these files to our graphic designer at work, and she was
able to make color separations in about 30 seconds, so we are unaware of what
your exact problem was. But
whatever the problem was, there was no communication of the problem, the
status, or the resolution as time dragged on.
Quality Issues:
When the first 25 calendars arrived, this graphic designer also
pointed out that the colors on a few months were not in good alignment. You can notice it easily when looking
at the dates in blue on the calendar portion of the lower page; they are
fuzzy. She told me that if we
were having these printed for one of our clients, our company would have
rejected them due to this.
However, we are not penalizing nor complaining about the quality. It is sufficient for our
needs.
Another
issue is the printing error on the "About the FLML" page. What should be a transparent oval GIF,
is instead an oval in a large white rectangle. This is not a huge problem, but it
could have easily been prevented if we had been
provided
with a proof as in the past; we were not.
Pricing:
Our
payment calculation comes to this:
Since no notification of the price increase over the previous year’s
job was given until after the first claimed shipment date, we, as the
purchaser, did not
have any choice in whether or not we would accept the terms of this job – also
known as ‘the right to refusal’.
At $7.81 per calendar, we would have chosen a different printing
company. No notification was
given that the terms of the job were dependent on the cost of neither your
films nor your time, so they may not be used as justification for the higher
price.
Therefore, the commonly accepted reasonable and established
price for the terms of this job falls to the historical price per item as set
per terms of the previous year’s agreement.
A
calendar must be, by its very definition, timely. Any delay in receiving the calendars
would result in portions of the calendar being essentially useless. As the calendars were not received
until March 13th, approximately 2 ½ months (or 20.8%) of the
usefulness of the calendar has expired and cannot be
paid
for.
There
were 28 refunded pre-sales due to the very late delivery. We are therefore stuck with 28 extra
units of the original 400 ordered.
Since you provided 40
extra copies above what was ordered, we will consider
those extras as the compensation for lost sales.
No
cost for our time to answer over 250 emails to explain the late delivery of
the calendar has been considered
in this calculation.
The
cost for dealing with an investigation by PayPal for “fraud” instigated by a
customer angry over the late delivery has been
considered
in this calculation.
In
previous transactions, shipping costs have been incurred by the seller, and
will be considered
as such for this transaction as no notification of a change in policy was
communicated.
Note: At the time when F****** gave us the cost of
the calendars over the phone, he asked if we were pleased with the price. I specifically told him that no, we
were not pleased, and gave a few of the reasons why. F****** stated at that time that he
would give us a call back to further discuss the pricing. To date, F****** has never
called.
We regret having to take this course of action, but feel we have
been left with little choice in this matter. We hope you understand our
position.
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