mplaczek

My wife has a little mini company at home, she designs her own bits and pieces to various ends.
Most recently she has done a few nice greeting cards and postcards. She approached a company about printing them and received some decent sample prints from them.

She placed a large-ish order to the tune of £600 and the cards that came back were really poor quality:
They were folded really badly. The edges did not line up at all and the bad overhangs were not even straight.
Secondly the cards were cut poorly, the top and the left hand edge basically looked torn and were creased at the edge. It clearly looks like the cutting tool was very blunt.
About 80% of the cards were of unsell-able quality.

We complained and were fobbed off with rubbish excuses and they could not believe their could be any problems with there cards as they are all finished to a high standard, apparently We were obviously being too picky and any variation in the folding was the natural miniscule variation but definitely meets commercial standards blah blah blah.

We sent photos etc and after many emails and a bit of an uphill struggle they eventually agreed to reprint the cards hooray, victory!!

However... we only ever received some of the designs and most of them are folded worse than before.

Anyhow another phone call and they claim that they have samples of the print they sent this time and they look fine to them. They said that the folding variation is not possible as it was all done by the same person (WTF! is that the level of control they have!!)
They say that they have wasted enough time dealing with us and they are not going to reprint them and not give us a refund either. All subsequent phone calls have been hung up on us.

My worries are that the cards are bespoke... so the standard 'send them back and get a refund' is not so clear cut... What can we do???

Any suggestions would be appreciated
We are thinking about small claims, but I imagine it will all go ignored

David Lock

They will ignore small claims court at their peril. Would be worth a phone call to Trading Standards as it's free and they may give you some guidance. I would guess it will come down to the Merchantable Quality or whatever the expression is. If it was me I would want to have a chat with another printer and seek his view on the quality and whether the standard was acceptable. Hope it works out. dl

warrenm2

not of merchantable quality - although that applies to consumer stuff rather than B2B