I gave a simple printing assignment to Metro Printing Center: 500 business cards for one of the…read moreparalegals at our office. I went there in person and gave one of the paralegal's business cards to an employee there, to make it as easy as possible to prepare the proof. All that had to be done was to re-type what was on the business card I had provided. However, when I received the preliminary proof of the business card, the person who prepared it had made three big mistakes:
1. The paralegal's actual business card, that I had given to the employee in order to create the proof, does not have any cell phone number listed on it. However, on the proof, my own cell phone number was taken from my business card and put it into the proof for the paralegal's business card.
2. The paralegal's business card very clearly lists her correct job title: "Senior Paralegal". However, the proof that was prepared by Metro Printing Center listed her job title as "Attorney at Law".
3. The paralegal's actual business card lists "Fluent Russian" underneath her name and job title. However, on the proof, "Fluent Russian" was replaced with "French - Spanish".
When I brought a printed copy of the proof into the store on a Friday afternoon, with my corrections written on it in red ink, and showed these errors to the owner of the store, this is what he said: "That's why we have a proof." What he said came across to me as dismissive and disrespectful. To me, it sounded like his basic message was "So what if we did a careless, sloppy job of preparing this proof. That's why we prepared it. So that after we made several careless errors you could spend your time correcting them for us. Therefore, you, the customer, have no right to complain about the quality of our work."
He did not apologize to me for these errors. As I stood inside of his store, discussing these errors with him, I heard nothing from him that gave me the impression that he was sorry for what had happened.
In addition, he told me that these errors on the proof would not be fixed that day, without bothering to tell me on what day the errors would be fixed. So, I had to ask him a follow-up question: by what day would these errors be fixed? He replied that he couldn't tell me yet. I then actually had to stand there and ask him yet another follow-up question: by when could he at least tell me how long it was going to take to correct these three errors. He told me that on Monday he could let me know how long it would take to fix the errors (but not necessarily that they would actually be fixed on Monday, even though it would presumably take all of five minutes for someone to fix these errors on their computer).
He also stated that:
1. The proof had been sent to me for review more than 10 days ago.
I don't understand how that fact made it O.K. to do such a sloppy, careless job of preparing the proof.
2. I hadn't paid his store anything yet for this work.
My not yet having been invoiced for this work, and hence not yet having paid for it, did not make it O.K. to do such a sloppy, careless job of preparing this proof.
While I was in his store, the owner did not apologize for what had happened. Instead, he told me, as another customer stood a few feet behind me and could hear everything he said to me, that if I was not pleased with the quality of his store's work, "You're welcome to take your business elsewhere."
That is exactly what I did. I took my business elsewhere, to a competitor located a few miles away. In one day, this other printing store provided me with a flawless proof, without a single error on it, for the paralegal's new business cards. Four days later, the business cards were ready and I picked them up. They were perfect.
