• I want to thank all the members that have upgraded your accounts. I truly appreciate your support of the site monetarily. Supporting the site keeps this site up and running as a lot of work daily goes on behind the scenes. Click to Support Signs101 ...

What to do when a long time customer uses a competitor

binki

New Member
For us if a customer goes someplace else, eh...but.....

Here is a situation we recently ran into:

We have a few customers that we pre-discount pricing. This is mostly clubs. What we do is give them volume pricing on their orders but allow their members to come in for small amounts. One of these clubs started going to a competitor for long runs and used us for one-offs and small runs.

We immediately called the person we first dealt with and told them we were moving them to retail pricing based on the number of items we were doing for each individual order. We explained that while we were not the cheapest on long runs we gave them a good deal for ALL of their work on the initial setup. This was very clear in our contract up front and while they didn't like what we did they are still coming to us for the short work because we are still a better deal than anywhere else (they don't have artwork and don't want to pay to have it done by someone else and yes, our contract states we own all files for the purpose of production and we do not distribute those files).

So the short answer is 'what was your agreement when you started?'

For us, it comes down to that. If we offer long pricing on short runs for ALL of their work then we expect that to happen. If we find out it doesn't then we either change the pricing or refuse the work.
 

Tony Q's Kidd

New Member
Lol these replies are amazing.

They come back, put the screws to them and raise your prices.
They don't come back, they don't come back.
They will learn that loyalty does have a huge price tag and they can say "we should have used you" with their wallets.
Sorry but i've got no friendly feelings for crap like that.
 

zulu-X-treme

New Member
I've just joined the site and I'd would just like to say a very big "THANK YOU" to everyone who commented and gave their opinions... I've been in the sign game for over 25 years and I must be honest by the sounds of things I've taken 'stuff' way to personal... Fair enough I've been born and raised in this 'little' town of ours and sometimes I expected allegiance and loyalty... But from now on I'll certainly look at things very differently...

Thanks again!!!
 
Top