Poor communication, poor customer service, and surprise fees.
In the past I have usually used henco for my black and white art prints, and have had very little issues.
I showed up the other day to pick up my order, but my color prints were the wrong size, I distinctly remember saying 11x14, they said they would fix it and give me a call to come back and get them by the end of the day. Before I left I was looking at the ones they had printed the wrong size and noticed they looked slightly blurred for some reason. I mentioned it to the printer, and he wanted to argue with me. He kept picking each one up and saying this one looks fine, it looks the same. I had to point out multiple times what I was talking about and he got angry. He argued with me telling me I had gotten "free color correction" as if that made it okay that my prints looked weird. I also thought it was weird because I was told the color correction was included I would only have to pay for the "good n cheap paper". He then agreed that he would see if he could find out why the prints were looking off.
I went out to hang around town while they fixed it because of the pandemic I'm having to stay outside of town an hour and thirty minutes away.
When I came back and paid I then looked at my receipt and they had charged me an additional $37.50 for color correction services that I had been told was included. When I asked about it he explained to me that if they just copied and printed my art it would look nothing like what the original looked like and that it took them hours to color correct each print. He also tried to justify the fee by saying they should have charged me way more.
I had not been told at any step along the way that the color correction process took so long and that it cost anything at all.
They did refund me, but they kept the prints, and since I waited an entire week to have them done, drove a round trip of three hours and had to spend an entire day waiting for them to fix something I still didn't get to buy I'm still livid. I didn't want free work, but I wanted to get the service I was promised for the price I was told along the way.
I think they could do better in the future by:
1.) Educating their customer
Most people getting prints come from the background of scanning shit in their printer and printing it out the same color in a matter of seconds. If color correction is a necessary thing that takes a long time on each piece, and costs money tell the customer and explain it in the beginning.
2.) Customer Service.
When someone points out why they are unhappy with the art prints made, it is good customer service to listen and offer options for it to be better. A customer being told that there's absolutely nothing off with the work when you are specifically pointing out where it's visibly different is frustrating. Telling someone a problem doesn't exist just because you don't want to fix it is poor customer service.
3.) Clear Communication
I was told all I would have to pay was for the paper, if that was an error, I should have been called and told that wasn't the case so I could have made a decision based on the fees.
If each print takes a significant amount of work and based on the amount I was buying it didn't provide enough money to pay for the work, I should have been told that there is a minimum.
Instead of trying to pass on subpar work by saying "Oh but you got free color correction" if the truth is that you are feeling underpaid by the amount of work you are having to do, you could have then at that moment told me "Hey we did the best we could with the amount of time we had to work on it, color correction takes a while, and with the amount of prints you wanted means that you need to pay us extra to get the quality of prints you want" yes that would have made me frustrated I that I had to drive that far, but I would have understood vs. having me wait all day, then tacking on a fee that doubled what I was to pay without explaining or being told it would be charged.
4.) Surprise fees are never okay. read more