That's what I would do.
Gino, you seem to be giving out two very different pieces of advice. Telling him to "do it" and then saying "personally you wouldn't do it".
Don't get that at all.
Not really two sets of advice, but for what it is..... I think he could easily just do it, get an extra $10 bucks or so, give it to the other shop and be done with it. If he's too high, the customer will go back to them or keep shopping around. If the OP here gets the job, just give them a courtesy finders fee and then tell them to be more careful with giving out free artwork and files. It would be a cheap lesson for them. The other sign shop would be lucky in my eyes to have someone do this and give them a token piece of advice to not do this anymore. They'd probably become friends and good things would pass between them from there-on-in.
For me, I wouldn't be bothered with this kind of nonsense to begin with. Someone show me that, I wouldn't heat my printer up for that job. We have a shop minimum and I'm sure this ain't gonna reach that.
The reputation part could go either way. To most, it means nothing.... only the almighty buck.
The real problem with a forum like this is that there isn't any 100% way of handling any of these predicaments all these people come up with. When it comes to guessing the difficulty to the number of colors to the quality of a file to any number of things..... are the printers busy, can I fit it in in the next 2 days, am I running something like this this afternoon, is this worth d!cking around with for $50, is this gonna come back and bite me in the rump, why didn't the other people do this if they created it, why is this guy shopping around a little decal.... even if it's a $300 job, why, why, why, why why........... ??
This kind of questioning is worthless. You and I both know 99.9% of these people are gonna do what they want and take the money by lowballing. Is that what our industry is based upon ?? Lowballing and stealing others artwork or files ?? Has this trade turned into fast food business for lettering ??
Sure, as we all hear.... ya gotta start somewhere, but no one starts by learning and asking questions, they all just want to buy cheap equipment, run it as cheaply as possible and then compare how low or how high they can go by asking others and when they don't get the right answers, they just blow it and lowball to make something.
How many questions can you answer about stealing other people's files, regardless of how you receive it ?? How many times can someone answer what is the cheapest ink to use, but they still wanna get dollar-wise, what you or I get using high end supplies with plenty of overhead. No one wants to compare apples to apples.... just buck to buck and the H*ll with what's in between the order and the paid invoice. What's the cheapest lam I can use ?? What can you do if someone brings you a copyrighted logo ?? Can I sell anything I want ?? Can I letter this truck in the snow ?? Can I weld this together with chewing gum.... it's only a temporary sign ?? Can I use any kinda wire, since it says to use 12 or 14...... I have an old extension cord I can cut apart. What does U/L mean.... do I really need to use it in the mall ?? I never heard of it and never used it, although the city codes calls for it. I made two boxes in my life and they're still up. They don't work, but they didn't fall on anybody.
Do you realize how bad the industry looks by the questions in this forum alone ??
AND this represents a miniscule cross-section of the whole industry. Take what you read here and multiply if by 99%.
That's why it has a second opinion in there.
We 're gonna start to need a serious column and a stoopid column, as this stuff is getting quite ridiculous.
:Oops: done.......... :Sleeping:
