This place lost my business to-day. Over the past year I've given it eight or nine opportunities to keep it. Over the past year it's fumbled nearly every one. The impression I have is that for some reason they simply don't like me - so much so that I wonder if they've mistaken me for someone else. I never bothered them with my disappointments because my jobs were small. But now it seems they simply aren't interested in small jobs at all, or at least mine. Also, they seem to expect me to be patient, but they express absolutely no patience with me.
I've only had very small, straightforward jobs recently, but a year ago, I had something bigger: I went in last year for a quote for 250 copies on a perfect bound book. The quote never came. No problem, lots of people can do this.
But now I have more manuscripts, and I've been using them to print them out about fifty pages at a time for copy editing. I would send them via email for pickup later.
Weirdly, most of the print jobs would come back a little oversize, say at 125%, without instruction to do so, because my own versions didn't fill the page. (I had deliberately made the margins larger for a hard-copy proofreader). A little disappointing, but no big problem, we can work around this too, though the proofreader has less space in which to write.
The last time before this one, I went in and showed them something new: I had a color job, single page print, a mock-up of a color business card, and asked for a quote if printed on card stock. I basically had them print a template for a job I would invite them to consider - and charging myself for the template printout. For the buck that I paid for the output, their color printing output was low - the colors weren't nearly as true as they were on my wife's machine.
Worse, the clerk seemed new and not to understand at all what I was asking for. The man who acted as a proprietor seemed too busy and disinterested in small jobs to help. (He has seemed to me this way often for the past two months). I left without feeling that I had ever been fully understood, even though I had brought in two samples, and because the jobs were small, they simply weren't interested.
I really don't blame the clerks. It seems as though the proprietors simply are leaving new clerks at the counter to fend for themselves, hoping the public will educate them about printing. Well, it's not the public's job to do that - it's the business's. If they don't have time to do it, I don't have time either, and even less interest to.
Now for to-day. I went in to pick up my copies and the price on my printouts were marked 20% higher than I've been paying. I asked about it, and they changed it, snickering. I guess I'm cheap to ask about it. But even for the admittedly small volume I do, other local copiers are cheaper anyway, so trying a price hike on me (without telling me in email when I sent the job) was likely to lose me anyway. I've just used this place because I felt like being loyal, though with my low volume lately, I have always been made to feel more like an intruder than a customer.
That wasn't the only thing that happened to-day. I also asked for a letterhead box, which I typically ask for when printing any new manuscript. Ah, to-day they were out. And - so was I. Most copy stores don't have letterhead boxes these days - this was a key deal maker for me. But I'll be glad to order them in bulk online going forward.
I take the time to get all this down because I hope anyone who has similar experiences might alert them to how some things are perceived by the public. Some dear friends swore by this place, but they've moved on in recent years, and my experience has been different. read more