Last Thursday I get a call around 11 AM. Organization needs 5 plaques for the next day. They're from out of the state, coming into the state for an event. Direct them to our website. They pick a plaque style I have in stock and I tell them I need all the engraving info & pay in full by 1PM and we'll take care of it for them. They also need to approve the proofs by the next morning at 10AM. If they don't do any of those three things, I'm charging them a rush charge.
So at 12:30 I get a call from their treasurer. They ask "How am I supposed to pay by 1PM, I'm out of the state." The obvious response "Give me your credit card number". "Oh, our organization doesn't have one. Can I fax you a check?" At this point I'm totally confused how faxing me a check is going to do anything. "Oh, we do it all the time..." So at this point I expect it's a scam. "No, we wouldn't accept that. We'd need a credit card number." "How about a wire transfer?" "No sir, we don't do wire transfers for orders." "Okay, let me call you back".
While I'm on the phone with their treasurer, I see emails flooding in to my mail box, which is a good and bad sign. Good that I'm getting info, bad that they are sending 3-4 emails for 5 plaques. So at 12:50 I get a call from the original person, "we'd like to give the president a trophy and we might need some more plaques." So the discussion results in a "trophy" being an acrylic award. I'm going to send them some examples of what I have on hand. 12:55, we get the credit card number. Doesn't really matter because I don't have a firm order and no way am I getting all the info in 5 minutes. So for the next 4 hours it's emailing and calling back forth. Finally at about 5:00PM they decide to give everyone acrylic awards, get final numbers, and "have all the engraving info".
I send them a new invoice, tell them to look it over. The new invoice includes a 20% rush charge. They approve it. Now these aren't big acrylics yet there is a LOT of text. I jam it in there because I just don't have the time to argue with them. I go on doing the proofs, included a cleaned up logo I did for free. I send them before we leave. Later that night I receive a few emails. A. The proofs are not correct. They didn't say it, but they didn't actually send me all the info. B. They want the rush fee waved because I was given the credit card number on time. Sent them an email back saying, send us all the info in 1 email to get the correct text and they can either buy the awards with the rush charge or not. They place the order and send the files.
Come in the next morning and re-lay out the acrylics. Each one is different, both major and minor differences. For example, they list the person presenting the award on each acrylic. It's the same person's name on 5 awards. It's typed 3 different ways. Get the work done, on time. Taking time away from a far more important project I have. They call about an hour before it's supposed to be done, and I tell them it's all done. So it's about 5:30 and they haven't come in. Call them up. I guess they had no real intention of picking them up because they had no idea who was going to get them. It ended up being about 5 minutes out of our way home, so we deliver them (I was over-ruled on this, as I would have told them tough luck).
We made decent money on the order but what a complete waste of time and energy.
Equipment: IS400, IS6000, VLS 6.60, LS100, HP4550, Ricoh GX e3300n, Hotronix STX20
Software: Adobe Suite & Gravostyle 5
Business: Trophy, Awards and Engraving