A tale of four printers

It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times. When my hard drive had an unrecoverable crash this fall, much was lost. I thought all would be lost, but during a sleepless night, as I pondered the question of why I hadn’t been backing up (sheer stupidity was the best I could come up with), I had an inspiration. Most of my older projects have been sent to press already, I thought. I bet the printers have an archived copy of my files.

I work with many different printers — some I choose, some are my clients preferred vendors. Each printer received a variation of this email or phone call: “Hi. I recently had a total computer crash, and I’m trying to reconstruct some of my old projects. If you could dearchive a project, I would be thrilled. I’d be happy to pay for your time and any material or shipping costs you have.”

All of the printers I contacted did have backups of my work. How they handled my request is a study in how, and how not, to run your business.

The best. Printing for Less (a large online digital printer) and Red Sun Press (a Boston based worker owned shop) were totally sympathetic. Printing for Less emailed my files back within the hour, at no charge. Jenny at Red Sun sent me a CD with not only the job I’d asked for, but ALL of my past jobs included, also at no charge. I was blown away at their excellent customer service, and you can bet I’ll be back and that I’ll recommend them to my clients.

The good. 4 by 6 is the company I use to print my business cards. They dearchived my work and emailed it back to me for $20. I think that’s fair — it was extra work on their part. I’m thrilled to have my logos back. (Yes, that’s right. I didn’t have archived versions of my own company ID. Backing up is my new religion.)

The ugly. I try to use local printers when I can. I’ve used one local printer for quite a few years, with a variety of clients. I called my contact at this printer and asked for one fairly recent job to be dearchived. I was assured that that could be done. No files. Another call. No files. A third call. No files. Someone else I work with called. No files. At this point I would have given up, but I needed a photo that was a part of the job I was trying to get a hold of. A job, I should mention, that I have printed annually at this printer.

Finally, the files were sent, to the wrong person. It took over two weeks. I will not be using this printer again if I can help it.

After much thought, I’m not going to include the name of this printer in this post, but email me if you really want to know, and I’ll spill.

How are you doing with customer service? Do you go above and beyond to keep a client or customer happy? Have you ever written off a company because of bad customer service?

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