After three successful small postcard print jobs and a fourth in the works, we sent 5 business cards to Print Harmony to be printed to reflect our new business address. Essentially, these were reprints with copy changes to our existing business cards (printed by others). Seemed like a pretty straight forward job. All 5 cards came back from Print Harmony cut crooked. Placed a polite phone call to print Harmony and was asked to file a written report with "Quality Control" which we did. "Quality Control" responded with the following message:
Quality control has reviewed your claim and by looking at samples from your job we could not determine that these cards were cut inaccurately. We advise on our website to not submit cards with lines or borders. There is a 1/16 inch variance on the cutter and they will not get trimmed exactly the same on all sides and when there are lines or borders it can make the overall piece look off center or "crooked". If you can alter your artwork we would like to offer you a 10% courtesy discount to reprint the cards for you. Please advise on how you would like to move forward with this offer.
Best wishes,
Quality Control
There were, in fact, two lines on the front of the card but no lines on the back of the card and no borders on either side. Additionally, we have been using this same layout for years and have never, ever, had a problem with the cards being cut crooked when printed by other printers. I placed a call again to Print Harmony to see if this was really their stance. The young ladies I spoke with were quite certain that the fault was ours. They recited several times their disclaimer that no borders or lines should be included in the design. I reiterated that there were no borders on any of the cards and lines only on one side of the card... Yet the cards were clearly, clearly crooked whether you looked at the front side that has two lines (and no borders) or the backside with NO LINES (and no borders.) They offered to print the cards again with a 10% discount. So, while we only have $113 invested in this order, we were only offered the option of reprinting the cards with a 10% discount.
Our company has been in the publishing business for 54 years and currently publish 6 titles across 14 states. Our business is producing quality publications and I don't think its unreasonable to expect a very basic level of qaulity from a vendor. The Print Harmony folks just want a few dollars from a lot of businesses and don't care about on-going customer loyalty and could care less about doing quality work that they stand behind. Its true that you get what you pay for... But if you're working with Print Harmony you'll get much less than you pay for. The $113 is insignificant in the scheme of things but its the principle of the matter. We've tossed the Print Harmony cards in the trash and chalked it up to a lesson learned. Hopefully others can profit from our lesson by steering clear of Printharmony.com.
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