Worst "everything went wrong" order you've ever had?

[Pat Whatley]

After my post I made last week about the business cards I got to talking to two other sign people this weekend about "jobs gone bad"

My worst would have to be a banner order I took many years ago. Back before there were digital printers on every corner we had a couple of suppliers who would do full color screen printed banners for us when we had large enough orders to justify it.

I got in a really good order for around 100 banners, the only catch was there was a pretty tight deadline. It worked out to about a $12,000 order, really big for us then. The printers did some figuring, told us they could have them for us, we just had to get the confirmation and the payment to them by noon that day.

Well that's where things started going bad. My boss at the time wanted to put the order on a credit card he had at home. He missed the "noon" part so he let it go until later that afternoon. I had to beg the printers to take the order but they wouldn't guarantee delivery any longer. We took the chance figuring the ONE extra day we had would cover us. Through the week my sales rep told us repeatedly everything was on schedule and it would all work out.

It didn't. The printers ran late. The banners had to be delivered by 9:00 Wednesday for distribution all over the state for company wide meetings being held at lunch Thursday.. I called the banner printers Monday afternoon to make sure they were going out overnight that day....they told me the earliest they'd have them out was Wednesday.

We ended up having them overnight the unfinished banners, planning to just trim them and grommet them and send them out without hems (they were only going to be used through the lunches). UPS got them to Montgomery....then promptly put them on the wrong delivery truck. The banners we thought we'd be working on by 9:00 am didn't get to our shop until 5:00....too late for us to get them to the distribution center.

So the only option we had was to overnight 100 banners to 100 different locations around the state for delivery early Thursday morning.

We busted our asses, dodged bullets, and got lucky as hell but we managed to pull the order off.

When the final tally was in, after paying for all the extra labor to finish the banners and paying for all of the overnight shipping, the order we should have cleared about $7000 on only ended up costing us about $100.

So.....what kind of "disasters" have you had to drag out of the fire?

 

[artbot]

world map

piece in seattle for a children's cancer clinic. it was finished one day late, due to change orders, for it go on the "free shipping to the project truck" so i had to overnight it for $1800. only to have it installed by "professional" installers incorrectly. the piece is scratched, so i have to hire a detail shop for $400 to polish out a scratch. then the client insists that it's not hanging right and i need to fix it personally. i advised to install some custom hardware that i would build. they insist that I install the little clips. so then i am forced to fly from houston to seattle to do ten minutes of work. when i get there, the janitor had already "fixed it". there is black silicone caulking squishing out of the corner of this $20,000 piece (keep in mind it was sold through an agency so i was paid $10k). so i then kill five more hours in a the local library to fiy home the same day. it's called the "world map" piece. and every time i see a world map now i shudder.

 

[Sticky Signs]

A few stand out but this one job was hell. Had to install Chrome mirror cut vinyl on large glass panels and digitally printed wall paper in a newly constructed restaurant. I had 2 days to the job. Problem is, the restaurant is 5 hours away and it's February on the west coast of Canada. Of course we had a huge snow storm the night before so the roads are awful. Did I mention that I had to drive through the mountains? Did I also mention that my experienced helper bailed out at the last minute so i had to get an unexperienced buddy of mine to help out. Luckily I have 4 wheel drive but unluckily, I barely have any gas. I figured the gas station should be right around the corner. Yeah right, somehow I drove for about 180km on a 1/4 tank of gas. At this point, things are looking good - until we hit construction on the highway. Who the hell does construction in February? We finally get to the location about 2 hrs after schedule. We scope out the situation and notice the contractor did not prime the drywall for the wallpaper. So we decide to start on the cut vinyl while the walls get prepped. Turns out the company that cut the vinyl didn't test the blade pressure and cut everything to deep. All the backing paper is ripping and sticking to the vinyl. each panel is a struggle and dust is collecting on all the adhesive. ARRRGHHH. We manage to get all the vinyl installed on the first night. I've now been up since 4am and it's not about 1 am. Little bit of sleep and back at it for the next day to install the wallpaper. This is when I notice the painter used some garbage paint that is full of sawdust and other debris and he only gave it one coat. My wallpaper glue is getting sucked right into the drywall. We spend that entire day and night installing wallpaper. get a bit of sleep and back in for the next day. We are now a day late on install. We finish up the wallpaper at around dinner time. The contractor is happy that everything is finished and they can open the restaurant. Another fun drive through the snowy mountains and I get home at about 2 am and I feel like a rock star because we've managed to pull off the impossible.

The whole time I was away, my wife kept calling me to tell me she's sick. Well, turns out she has major pneumonia and has to be hospitalized in intensive care for 2 weeks. A couple days after returning home I get a call from the client saying the wallpaper is unacceptable. what??? turns out all the seems lifted and where very visible. Now I'm freaking out and I've lost all rock star status. Since owning my business, I've never had a job go south on me like this. ARRRGGGHHH. I can't leave to go fix it because my wife is barely hanging on. What to do??? Well, several phone calls and headaches later, we manage to get a local wallpaper guy to go check it out. He tells us the worst - it's a complete redo - NOOOOOOO!!!!! I can barely breath because I feel so awful about all this. I didn't sleep for a week because I felt so bad, not to mention my wife is critically ill. everything was ripped off, the drywall patched and the new wallpaper installed. When it rains, it poors. Luckily, my wife recovered and was back home within a couple weeks. I still have nightmare about the whole thing.

 

[jasonx]

piece in seattle for a children's cancer clinic. it was finished one day late, due to change orders, for it go on the "free shipping to the project truck" so i had to overnight it for $1800. only to have it installed by "professional" installers incorrectly. the piece is scratched, so i have to hire a detail shop for $400 to polish out a scratch. then the client insists that it's not hanging right and i need to fix it personally. i advised to install some custom hardware that i would build. they insist that I install the little clips. so then i am forced to fly from houston to seattle to do ten minutes of work. when i get there, the janitor had already "fixed it". there is black silicone caulking squishing out of the corner of this $20,000 piece (keep in mind it was sold through an agency so i was paid $10k). so i then kill five more hours in a the local library to fiy home the same day. it's called the "world map" piece. and every time i see a world map now i shudder.

You forgot Malta on the world map

That's an awesome piece of work.