Sign Warehouse

[Mikeifg]

O.K. here's the deal. I ordered some material on Jan 30th. I called in and the person I spoke with could not find the product I wanted and suggested I order it online. So I order it online and 4 days later I call and they never shipped it out. So without giving me free shipping (Like all the other suppliers offer)for my troubles it's shipped and I still dont have it!!! That's O.K. though my competetion took care of me and got the order done when my client went to them. What pisses me off is I have not recieved any apology or reimbursement for any of this. In today's econimic times what the hell is a company thinking. Where's the customer service. I had not used them in about a year and thought I would give them another try. So does anyone know of a supplier of Oracal 200 40" Laminate.

Mike

 

[southside signmaker]

Fellers and Advantage sign supply carry the Oracal brand and 200 series. I think the issue is the 40" size seems a bit unusual. As for Signwarehouse the company is one I will never do business with because they have become a competitor for me.

As I made a sales call right before Christmas to one of my smaller clients (average yearly sales $1,400), they informed me that they had purchased their own sign making equipment. I took a quick peek and noticed a 8-10 year old plotter with Signwarehouse decals all over it. The manager at the clients office asked me to take a look at it as it was not plotting correctly. I could not help him (nor would I), but did ask what type of pricing he received on material. When the price came back at my cost I new I had a new competitor on "the street". What a shame that competitor was a mail order outfit a 1000 miles away. I promptly informed SW that I budgeted 30K for printing equipment and the bid from them would not be considered.

With the economy the way it is it is time to take a close look at suppliers and find ones that help your business. An article by Vince Dicecco in Sign Business, Dec. 2008 had an excellent article regarding suppliers. I highly recommend it.

Sorry to hear you lost a job because of an ineffective supplier.

 

[sarge]

i have had simular and worse problems with SW .. Midwest Sign Supply has always been good to me .. and they ship i am sure .. also Northwest Sign Supply, however i am not sure they ship .. NW is my goto guys .. i order @ 0730hrs .. here @ 1000hrs free delivery and they have NEVER screwed me .. i get calls from them to see how the delivery process is working from me at least once a quarter .. as for the Oracal call Midwest .. i am pretty sure they ship

 

[Pat Whatley]

Several months ago I got an email offer from them for 10 50-yard rolls of LG vinyl for something like $200. The order page said nothing about the length of the rolls.

When the order confirmation came in they were 10 yard rolls instead of 50 yard. I emailed, called, left messages and NOBODY would ever get back with me. I figured that when it came in I'd just refuse the shipping and dispute the charge. I was out when the box arrived, my employee (who didn't know any better) opened it and had already used four of them before I realized it so I was stuck with them.

I could have lived with someone telling me it was a typo. It wasn't that big of a deal to me, it was only $200. It's just the fact that NOBODY ever bothered to return any of my emails or phone calls pissed me off. They sure seemed to call me a couple of times a day when I was looking at at ValueJet.

Hate it but they aren't a vendor I'll use again.

 

[149motorsports]

I called few weeks back asking for a new 2009 pricing guide, told them i had the old 2008 issue, well 2 weeks later they send me the exact copy i allready told them i have!

 

[sarge]

Mike .. Midwest Sign Supply and Northwest Sign Supply will ship .. just google them .. like i said, i tend to use Northwest first .. and both are located in the seattle area .. but i am sure Midwest has a store closer to you

 

[Mikeifg]

Thanks, Sarge I'll try them.

 

[Pro Image]

Try Fellers.......They have a warehouse in Indy should be a 1 day ship to you........

 

[JBarraxSW]

Mike. I'm sorry to hear about your problem with the OraGuard order. It looks like we dropped the balll on that one. If you will kindly PM me with your contact info, I'll see what I can do.

 

[JBarraxSW]

I called few weeks back asking for a new 2009 pricing guide, told them i had the old 2008 issue, well 2 weeks later they send me the exact copy i allready told them i have!

Sorry for the mixup 149.
We had the same part number on the 2008 and 2009 books, so your sales rep couldn't tell which edition he or she was shipping. I brought it to the attention of our President and the Purchasing staff. We've changed the internal part number to make sure that doesn't happen again. And we have plenty of the 2009 versionn in stock.
Thanks for the feedback.

 

[Pat Whatley]

Hey Jerry...want to explain the lack of communication on the LG vinyl?

 

[JBarraxSW]

Judging from what you've posted there was a simple omission in the Email blast. As often as we look over the proofs, we sometimes miss a detail like that. I say "we" because I'm involved in managing that process and it's tricky to cath your own mistakes. After having looked at a promotion six or seven times, you stop seeing it objectively.
At any rate, your sales rep certainly should have returned your call and let you know that there was an error in the blast and that we couldn't sell 50 yd rolls for the price of tens.

 

[Pat Whatley]

Wasn't an omission...it said 24" x 50 yd. rolls. But it's cool, I still made money with the vinyl. Thanks for explaining...an apology would have been nice from somebody, at some point, but I guess an excuse will suffice.

 

[Raulrdz]

Go figure...I just got back from Target and as I walked the isles I noticed something that I had seen at other retailers...empty shelves especially on large items like LCD tv's and such. Now I know it's income tax time and many are getting their returns back and spending money but not so much that the shelves would be empty. I spoke with a friend of mine who is the manager of the local Office Supply store and he stated that because of the economy, the trend in retail is to sell as much inventory as possible and not carry such big overhead which explains the empty shelves. You would think with times as they are, vendors such as SW, Fellers and such would be bending over backwards for customers. If they haven't yet realized it, what's going to keep customers buying from them during these hard times is customer service, it's a cheap commodity that carries a lot o weight with customers. I can never understand why its so hard for some companies to treat their customers right and do the right thing, after all isn't that the right thing to do regardless of the ecomomy.

 

[sarge]

raul .. a few days ago customer service came up on another thread .. i viewed my feeling about getting screwed by a vendor and the vendors not doing what they could to fix the problem and .. i got flamed .. and got it from some of our merchant members .. i think it is sad, that they dont feel keeping a customer at all cost is paramont to the servival of their business .. i got hosed by a merchant member in this forum years ago .. wacked me out so bad i found someone new .. and i have spent 100's of thousands in the past years from guys i mentioned above .. every chance i get i recommend the good guy vrs the bad guys

 

[Techman]

The four answers of responsibility...

Yes,
No,
I don't know
No excuse.

Simple. Live up to these four words reduces excuses, blame, and deflection.

Did an error occur ?
YEs.

Did we do anything to make sure it does not happen again?
yes.

Is there anything else we can do to make sure it does not happen?
No.

Why did it happen in the first place?
I did now know there was an error?

Why didn't you know?
There is no excuse.

Eliminate the "I don't know factor" and the mistake will never happen in the first place.

Hm maybe making these rules a policy in the customer service departments will make a difference.

 

[cdiesel]

I dunno.. it seems like it's all the time with SW.

Jerry's always here to apologize, but honestly, what good's that do? Like Pat, you can't even get a call back half the time.

 

[B Snyder]

I dunno.. it seems like it's all the time with SW.

Jerry's always here to apologize, but honestly, what good's that do? Like Pat, you can't even get a call back half the time.

You're right. Search any sign related message board and you'll find the same scenarios over and over again year after year.

 

[southside signmaker]

Maybe Jerry can pm me and give me the finer points of selling a car dealer material at the same price point many on this board are getting. Maybe someone can get their head out of their rear end and concentrate on sign customers and not car dealers.

When I called sw a nice sales woman explained to me that they had no control over who they sold to. Great now we have sign suppliers selling to end users.. End users that will have a hard time spending more than $300 bucks a year in vinyl.

Jerry fell free to pm me and we can go over the finer points of what a distributor is supposed to accomplish for their customers.

 

[The Sign Dude]

Hey you fellas take it easy on the old S-DUB. they were nice enough to offer me a FREE pair of scissors if I ordered a $100 worth of stuff from them WOO HOO.