As a small business owner myself, I do not find pleasure or make a habit out of bashing other small business owners. Although Chick was always very polite and courteous, the overall experience I had with getting shirts from him was totally unacceptable. He never returned a single phone call or email throughout the whole process, waited until ONE DAY before my shirts were to be picked up to even START the screens, and lastly, he ended up using a different color shirt entirely than what I asked for. Very disappointing... There's no excuse for this complete lack of regard & professionalism.
After researching several different screen printing shops in the area, a friend of mine recommended Chick's. So I went in to their shop a few months prior to our fundraiser event to discuss our options. A week or two later, our artwork was 90% finalized, so I went back to Chick & handed him my flash card so he could check it out. He just looked at it dumbfounded and asked me what to do with it. That should have been the first red flag. It took me a second to realize that he had never seen a flash card before. Then I looked at his computer and realized he had probably been using the same one for the last 20 years. Same thing probably goes for his programs.
Needless to say, he was unable to look at the file, so I just emailed him the file later. He never returned my email. I called him a few days later (on a Friday) and he said he probably wouldn't get to it until Monday. Another week went by, and still no contact was made by Chick. Our entire interaction for this period of time was based on a one way street of me trying to contact him, but getting nothing in return.
Finally, I was starting to get nervous since our event was coming up in one week and I still hadn't heard from him, so I called again and he promised that we'd have the shirts 3 days before our event. So the week of our event finally came around, and a day before we were supposed to pick them up, I called to give them my credit card # for the deposit (they never even asked for it, I just thought that taking the initiative would help speed things up). I asked how the shirts were coming, and the woman on the phone mentioned that Chick was three hours behind.... So ONE DAY before our event, he called me and said that something was wrong with the artwork (even though I was staring at exactly the same vector artwork in Illustrator on my computer and everything was perfect). I come to find out that he's working with Adobe Illustrator version 8!!!!!!!! This program was created SIXTEEN years ago!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He also stated that he "never really uses Illustrator, mostly just Corel Draw." I was floored. Here's a guy who is in the screen printing business, who doesn't know what a flash card is, and uses an outdated computer as well as outdated software. Wow.
Anyway, I sent him eps files instead of ai and that seemed to work. He said that he wouldn't have the shirts done that day, but instead the following morning. Mind you, he was already TWO days late!!!! I was absolutely fuming with disbelief on the phone, but I needed these shirts for a fundraiser event the next day!! So I had a friend go pick them up while I was three hours away, at the event. My friend picked up the shirts and arrived later at the event. I open the box and the shirts were Navy blue, even though I ordered Charcoal. Unbelievable. The complete lack of care & professionalism on Chick's part throughout this whole process is hard to fathom. We will never use his shop again.
(*The only reason there is one star on this review is because yelp forces you to give at least one. Otherwise, I would not have given any.) read more
