Contract regarding PHYSICAL Printed Proofs?

[James Burke]

- but sending two and insisting they send one back with a signature is ideal.
My .02, anyway.

Yep, this is what we do. It clearly states what we'll do if we were wrong, and it also explains what the customer should expect if they are wrong.

Lately, we've had some customers saying that it looks good and to "just go ahead and run it" (they don't have time to mess around with paperwork...since they want it yesterday). Either way, it seems you run the risk of pi$$ing them off. But even if that is the case, just make sure that the odds are ever in your favor.


JB

 

[Gino]

This is really getting out-a-hand.

So, if someone on your end makes a mistake, you blame the customer for not catching it ahead of time ??
If someone on their end made a mistake and didn't catch it, you still blame the customer for not catching it ??
If someone on your end stoopidly deletes something, misreads something or does the wrong input and your customer didn't catch YOUR mistake..... it's their fault ??

Man alive..... at some of your shops, your customers are f*cked before they even get the bill. Your making non-professionals responsible for things, you might invent.

Long time ago, it was said, be fair, honest and do your best and you'll go far in business. That's any business. Putting on brakes, quoting them or signs. I guess your shingle reads..... ABC Signs. Buyer Beware !!​

​

• Ya know, you could make a killing in business by making a minute mistake, accidentally on purpose and then get paid to do the job again, cause they didn't find your little diddley. Nice approach. I guess that's business 101 for future people. What the heck kinda work ethics are they teaching in school these days ?? Ain't sounding too promising. No wonder this country is in the demise it's in, if we all pass the buck continuously.

 

[James Burke]

Wow...that was ironic.

Whilst typing my first reply, a customer emailed me to say he specified the wrong death date for his wife's memorial.

Fortunately, it's still in the pre-production process and I hadn't finished his final artwork approval papers.


JB

 

[Andy D]

This is really getting out-a-hand.

So, if someone on your end makes a mistake, you blame the customer for not catching it ahead of time ??
If someone on their end made a mistake and didn't catch it, you still blame the customer for not catching it ??
If someone on your end stoopidly deletes something, misreads something or does the wrong input and your customer didn't catch YOUR mistake..... it's their fault ??

Man alive..... at some of your shops, your customers are f*cked before they even get the bill. Your making non-professionals responsible for things, you might invent.

Long time ago, it was said, be fair, honest and do your best and you'll go far in business. That's any business. Putting on brakes, quoting them or signs. I guess your shingle reads..... ABC Signs. Buyer Beware !!​

​

• Ya know, you could make a killing in business by making a minute mistake, accidentally on purpose and then get paid to do the job again, cause they didn't find your little diddley. Nice approach. I guess that's business 101 for future people. What the heck kinda work ethics are they teaching in school these days ?? Ain't sounding to promising. No wonder this country is in the demise it's in, if we all pass the buck continuously.

Like I said, most of the time we will eat the mistake, but let's say you do a 100 4'x8' banners and the proof the customer approved
had a phone number one digit off or their website should have been .net instead of .com, are you going to eat
all of the cost to redo them?

What I have a problem with is people nowadays that sign an agreement, without looking it over carefully,and cry foul when it's not right.
When I sub stuff out, I look the proof over very carefully because I know if there is a mistake, even if I didn't make it, I will be paying to have it
remade. When I sign a contract, I read it carefully & if there is something I don't understand, I have someone who will look it over before I sign it.

 

[Gino]

Like I said, most of the time we will eat the mistake, but let's say you do a 100 4'x8' banners and the proof the customer approved
had a phone number one digit off or their website should have been .net instead of .com, are you going to eat
all of the cost to redo them?

What I have a problem with is people nowadays that sign an agreement, without looking it over carefully,and cry foul when it's not right.
When I sub stuff out, I look the proof over very carefully because I know if there is a mistake, even if I didn't make it, I will be paying to have it
remade. When I sign a contract, I read it carefully & if there is something I don't understand, I have someone who will look it over before I sign it.

Whose mistake was it ?? Did they give it to you wrong or did your team change it ??


I heard what you said...... and what I'm saying is accountability. Who was responsible for making the mistake ??

There was a guy on here a week or two ago about making mistakes and his boss was getting p!ssed at him. Whose mistake or responsibility was it to send so many mistakes out ??

How can we even be discussing who to make pay or not, when you can't even figure out who made a mistake in the first place ??

Distinguish whose mistake it is and that's who pays for it or eats it. Has nothing to do with deep pockets, can you or the customer afford it, but whose fault is it ??

 

[fresh]

Like I said, most of the time we will eat the mistake, but let's say you do a 100 4'x8' banners and the proof the customer approved
had a phone number one digit off or their website should have been .net instead of .com, are you going to eat
all of the cost to redo them?

What I have a problem with is people nowadays that sign an agreement, without looking it over carefully,and cry foul when it's not right.
When I sub stuff out, I look the proof over very carefully because I know if there is a mistake, even if I didn't make it, I will be paying to have it
remade. When I sign a contract, I read it carefully & if there is something I don't understand, I have someone who will look it over before I sign it.

I totally agree with you, regardless of who made the mistake. The reason we send out proofs is so that the customer can verify that we didn't make any mistakes in the copy/content/color of the sign.

On things like menus that are text heavy, I ask my customers to have at least one other person proof it. We are all human, but I'm not redoing your sign for free if you were too lazy to actually read it before it was completed.

 

[boxerbay]

we have $500,000 /yr clients. they could have a signed off proof and they be totally wrong and we would reprint the job without a problem. you have to look at the big picture and determine if your ready to divorce the client or your going to work it out. defiantly review your process and try to improve where you can on it.

 

[Andy D]

Whose mistake was it ?? Did they give it to you wrong or did your team change it ??


I heard what you said...... and what I'm saying is accountability. Who was responsible for making the mistake ??

There was a guy on here a week or two ago about making mistakes and his boss was getting p!ssed at him. Whose mistake or responsibility was it to send so many mistakes out ??

How can we even be discussing who to make pay or not, when you can't even figure out who made a mistake in the first place ??

Distinguish whose mistake it is and that's who pays for it or eats it. Has nothing to do with deep pockets, can you or the customer afford it, but whose fault is it ??

I'm asking you, if your customer approved a proof for 100 4'x8' banners, that one of your employees either wrote down the phone number wrong or
you designers copied the phone number into the design wrong.. are you going to eat the whole cost to remake the banners, knowing your customer probably
glanced at the proof for two seconds before approving them? I'm saying that when you put your name on the dotted line, saying it's right you d@mn well better make sure it's right.
Or else, why even send proofs?

Example, my Daughter's graduation invitations were around $800, and they plainly stated that once I approved the layout and there was a mistake, even if it was their mistake,
I would have to pay the full amount to have them remade, and why shouldn't I? Who else would know better the spelling of my Daughter's name, the time, the date, & address?
When people know they are responsible for mistakes, they take the proof approval seriously.

 

[boxerbay]

if it was a random client with a wedding invite = most likely a one time sally client. I would hold you to the contract. keep your money and let you walk as i would not see any possible future orders unless she plans on getting married often.

if it's one of my long time big time clients = future jobs will outweigh this mistake. I would explain the issue. show them how important it is to have multiple persons review the proof before signing. re-print the job for from. then prorate that reprint job cost over the next few orders. I would cover my costs and the client would love me for covering their mistake. no conflicts and everyone is happy.

 

[Gino]

I'm asking you, if your customer approved a proof for 100 4'x8' banners, that one of your employees either wrote down the phone number wrong or
you designers copy the phone number into the design wrong.. are you going to eat the whole cost to remake the banners, knowing your customer probably
glanced at the proof for two seconds before approving them? I'm say that when you put your name on the dotted line, saying it's right you d@mn well better make sure it's right.
Or else, why even send proofs?

Example, my Daughter's graduation invitations were around $800, and they plainly stated that once I approved the layout and there was a mistake, even if it was their mistake,
I would have to pay the full amount to have them remade, and why shouldn't I, who else would know better the spelling of my Daughters name, the time, the date, & address?
When people know they are responsible for mistakes, they take the proof approval seriously.

Yes. If I, or one of our people made the mistake and transposed something, we would tell them, there will be a delay, as we hafta do the run over. We will be honest and tell them we goofed something up. If the job went out and they were already distributed, we'd still make them over as quickly as possible. I don't think I would have the nerve to blame my mistake on them.... even with a proof. I do not have the ability to know if they spent two seconds, two minutes or two days looking at this proof. Again, that is not the question. The question is, whose mistake is/was it ??
Why even use proofs, if you're gonna change things around and make it a hit or miss game with such a customer ??

If you have strange spellings [foreign names] or a lotta date or price changes, then we specify, you must check these particular things, as we cannot be responsible for things we don't know. However, if I change THEIR spelling, numbers or whatever...... then it's my mistake, whether they catch it or not.

Lastly, in just about any job coming in, there is a loss factor included with all jobs. This cost replaces mistakes, wrongly cut vinyl, wrong colors or bad prints. It's in each and every project. After a while this number really adds up. In recent years, at the end of the year, it usually goes over $35,000. We use very little of it, but if your banner job went south like you mentioned, it wouldn't cost us much more than about $1,800 to replace that whole job. So, you're saying, cause it looks big to you, you're gonna jeopardize a $17,000 order because of a mere $1,800 ??

Ya hafta do your part and that's why communications, proofs and all this other stuff is necessary, because so many mistakes are made today. If you are careful and have certain checks in place, very very little can slip through and if it does, it better not be a big one, cause that'll p!ss me off.

 

[Andy D]

Why even use proofs, if you're gonna change things around and make it a hit or miss game with such a customer ??

Honest question, not trying to be a smart ***, just want to make sure we're on the same page: if on the proof their phone number is wrong and they
approve the proof , not that they approve the correct phone number and it got changed after the fact, you would do a full redo?
I wouldn't, I would offer to cover the phone number up with a printed decal with their correct # free of charge, but no way I would do full redo on my dime.....

Edited to add: A business can never truly give away, or redo a job free of charge, it has to passed on to other customers, and I would rather not
raise the price of my products on the customers that respect my time and there's enough to actually look over a proof.

 

[rossmosh]

There were a couple of points in the statement highlighted, but if your talking about holding your customer responsible for catching your typesetting mistakes, that seems a little crazy to me. That's like your mechanic making you look over the brake job he just did and sign off on it. Then you crash backing out of the parking space because you couldn't stop. "You signed off on it so it's not my fault." says the mechanic. Just listen to the statement " you made the mistake and your customer didn't catch it." In the first place at least one other person in your shop should have looked over the proof before it was sent to the client. It is embarrassing to send proofs with mistakes.

The other part is if a customer makes a mistake I don't feel like I need to kick them when they are down. They pay the full amount for the first one and I discount some of the profit on the corrected run. If I charge them the full amount both times I have probably lost a customer. If I discount the reprint, I run the chance of saving that employees job and gained a loyal customer. There's also a chance in the future to make up the loss.

Never tell a customer you will reprint it at cost, just discount it. If you sell them the first a full price and then sell the reprint "at cost" They will subtract the two and get the wrong impression about your profit margin.

That doesn't mean that I didn't cover myself in the past and get approval on digital proofs, and sign offs on color proofs. The customer needs to understand the gravity of signing off on a proof.

Your call.

First, if I can discount for a mistake, I typically will. I feel it's good for the relationship and simply because economically it makes sense. There are about 2-3 steps I can cut out of the process by re-doing a job and that justifies a discount. There are certain circumstances where that isn't as much the case. If I'm doing a nice run of something and I cut my price down low to get the job, there simply might not be margin there to offer a discount. Everyone's been there where they price a job they know will go smoothly at a very competitive price because they want the job. That said, typically that pricing doesn't permit for a huge error.

Second, your example is not applicable. People don't know how to install brakes and even if they did, you need to literally sit in the garage with the mechanic as they install it to verify they didn't make a mistake. There is no magical inspection once the wheel is on and the car is on the ground to check the brakes other than drive and hit the brakes.

A more applicable example is a home painter. If you wanted your house painted blue. You talk the to painter. Talk about shades you want. He says "great, I'll bring by a sample tomorrow for you to check it out." He buys a little sample and paints a 12in x 12in square on your house at 1PM. You say "Perfect. I love it!". Great. Guy goes and buys 10 gallons and paints your house while you're at work. You show up at 6PM and say "It's not blue. It's almost purple!!!!" Do you honestly expect him to eat the cost of painting your house? The paint is the same shade as you approved. Who's fault is it? It doesn't really matter if it's the exact same swatch you picked a week earlier. It doesn't matter he went with SW paint instead of BM. What matters at the end of the day is he went and got the sample and painted it on your wall and you said "Perfect. I love it!" Why isn't that enough?


I believe it's bad business to make mistakes. When I make a mistake, even when a customer approves it, I'm not happy about it. I think about how improve the process for it not to happen again. I think about ways to hammer home to our customers they need to check things and I also think about how I can not make the same mistake again. It's resulted in improved processes and less mistakes. With all that said, I'm still not eating a job or running it at a loss after I send a proof and ask the customer to check it over carefully. I eat it when something happens with the process or when the equipment/employees screw up the production. I'm not also eating it because it says "Giant Equipment Inc" and you're "Gianti Equipment Inc". If you can't catch the fact your company's name is spelt wrong, then shame on you.

 

[Gino]

Honest question, not trying to be a smart ***, just want to make sure we're on the same page: if on the proof their phone number is wrong and they
approve the proof , not that they approve the correct phone number and it got changed after the fact, you would do a full redo?
I wouldn't, I would offer to cover the phone number up with a printed decal with their correct # free of charge, but no way I would do full redo on my dime.....

Not sure I follow you. And I am trying to answer you as best I can.

The proof has the wrong phone number and they approved it. Got changed after what fact ?? Who changed the number ?? You or them. Did they give you the wrong number to begin with or did you transpose a number or just use a wrong number ??



Instead of a dime, charge a quarter and then you can do what others and myself have explained to you.



Real story and it's happened around me a few times. An old friend of mine did a whole bunch of stationery, business cards, invoices, envelopes and all kinds of other things for a client of his. He moved into a new location and hadda change a lotta things around. He sent the proofs over and everything was authorized, signed off and dated. Now, this is long before computers were around, so you hadda set type and stuff to do a lot of this. My friend called the guy and said his stuff was ready. Great. Hey, by the way, how'd you get this number ?? What number ?? The number you called me on. Well, that's the number you gave me. Nope, can't be, nope, uh-uh. Yep, right there on your proof. Silence.................... You mean I gave you my home phone number for all of this ?? I guess so, it's the only number I have for you. He said, I need all of this repeated, but with the correct number. You used the wrong number. But, how could I know a number if you never gave it to me ?? I dunno, but I can't use any of this. My friend held his ground, knocked about 15% off the follow-up order and explained how it wasn't at all his fault, but the other guy never came back after that job was finished.

Now, in that case, the customer gave wrong information. Glossed over it and saw a number that he recognized, just not in the correct context and gave his blessing.

 

[fresh]

Not sure I follow you. And I am trying to answer you as best I can.

The proof has the wrong phone number and they approved it. Got changed after what fact ?? Who changed the number ?? You or them. Did they give you the wrong number to begin with or did you transpose a number or just use a wrong number ??



Instead of a dime, charge a quarter and then you can do what others and myself have explained to you.



Real story and it's happened around me a few times. An old friend of mine did a whole bunch of stationery, business cards, invoices, envelopes and all kinds of other things for a client of his. He moved into a new location and hadda change a lotta things around. He sent the proofs over and everything was authorized, signed off and dated. Now, this is long before computers were around, so you hadda set type and stuff to do a lot of this. My friend called the guy and said his stuff was ready. Great. Hey, by the way, how'd you get this number ?? What number ?? The number you called me on. Well, that's the number you gave me. Nope, can't be, nope, uh-uh. Yep, right there on your proof. Silence.................... You mean I gave you my home phone number for all of this ?? I guess so, it's the only number I have for you. He said, I need all of this repeated, but with the correct number. You used the wrong number. But, how could I know a number if you never gave it to me ?? I dunno, but I can't use any of this. My friend held his ground, knocked about 15% off the follow-up order and explained how it wasn't at all his fault, but the other guy never came back after that job was finished.

Now, in that case, the customer gave wrong information. Glossed over it and saw a number that he recognized, just not in the correct context and gave his blessing.

The client approved the quote with the wrong information. Its irrelevant who inputted it, I'm still not going to redo it for free if they said it was correct.

 

[Andy D]

I'm not sure about ya'll but most of our projects have multiple signs on multiple substrate with multiple colors, sizes, fonts, quantities & wording.
With the information given over the phone or in person by a customer that has to answer their phone every five minutes...
It's amazing to me that we get the 1st proof 100% correct as often as we do.

There are literally thousands of ways to get the customer's proof wrong and only one way to get it right. The customer is the only one that truly knows what they want,
and should be held accountable if they approved the proof.

 

[Gino]

The client approved the quote with the wrong information. Its irrelevant who inputted it, I'm still not going to redo it for free if they said it was correct.

So, this person gives you this old menu, which you created and asked for some changes for prices. Which one do you give her ??

 

[rossmosh]

So, this person gives you this old menu, which you created and asked for some changes for prices. Which one do you give her ??

​

1. There is a difference between editing an existing file that's been approved and new work.

2. You still should read through it. It took me less than 2 minutes to catch Raspberry being the difference. Assuming the job you're doing cost $300 and a re-run is going to cost $200, I'd say spending 2 minutes is worth saving $200.

We're sign guys. We deal with all different clients. I might type the word Raspberry twice a year. You might use it 100 a week and write it out 10 times a week. Cut me a little slack and help me out a bit.

I think it's also a good time to blame Photoshop/Illustrator/Ect for not putting the damn red squiggly lines under words that aren't spelled correctly. How hard would that be to implement? I can't figure out why they won't implement that feature.

 

[Andy D]

So, this person gives you this old menu, which you created and asked for some changes for prices. Which one do you give her ??

You're kind of proving my point, most people would think Rasberry was correct, due to the fact it's a commonly misspelled word, but a person
with it on their menu would see it right away if they actually took the time to read the proof.