Are we in the wrong ?

Four pages of "Oh yes they should!", "Oh no they shouldn't" and "If it was a BMW ..."

I absolutely love GD on a Friday, it's comedy central. And my tuppence worth is that the client is at fault for incorrectly checking the proof but the better business-retention solution is to go 50/50.

Lol, keep it up guys :)
 
a 50/50 decision wont cost you 50/50 anyway, unless you're ding it at cost price, and splitting that.

Depending on your margin, it will probably work out a lot less than 50:50 (in cost terms to you) so all should be fine.
 
Legally it's the clients problem. If you can prove they accepted and signed off the proof then the burden of fault is on them. The last contract communication is from them accepting the prrof as the final print.

However, simply to appease the situation a 50/50 solution may be your best bet. However, if the client produces no repeat business then stick to your guns.
 
Technically you could blame your client for the mistake and that you printed what they had approved.

If you ever want repeat business or a good local reputation than I would say you should at least take majority responsibility offer it at a massive discount or better yet for free. Even with a discount client still likely to look elsewhere next time, or if you give for free very likely to get repeat if they need it.
 
Its their fault, but getting them to admit it will likely cause trouble.

Happened to us before, he provided a hand written draft of roughly what he wanted, we mistook one letter in his e-mail address for a different letter (and I'm sure you know how it is with e-mails, could be any letters in there. It made sense both ways). He got the proof, said it was fine to go ahead, we printed, he wasn't happy and decided to go to the papers. He hadn't even paid us anything.... :rolleyes:

What we do in my work is to get them to sign off the proof after checking it before it goes to print. They get a duplicate of the signature, we keep the original. Seems to encourage them to take the checking more seriously, haven't had a problem with this sort of thing since we started doing it.
 
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All of this is absolutley pointless the blame lies with whoever has broken the T&Cs of the company, id check them before anything else.

decide on if its "good for business" later, its up to the person in charge ultimately.
 
if other potential customers hear that your company made a mistake and charged the client then they might think twice about giving you their business
 
uvmain said:
sounds fair tbh..

It's a good idea to pay for some - even tho you don't have to - just as you're a small business.

If the profit loss isn't too horrendous, then you may reap the rewards when the current client tells others how helpful and kind you were.

You need to decide whether this is going to work as a loss leader or not.
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I disagree entirely. If I was offered a 50/50 split I would most likely tell the op to bugger off, and I certainly wouldn't use/recommend the company again. In my opinion the OP should accept the responsibility (as the **** up was his initially), absorb the loss and make it back by gaining himself a repeat customer (I use photobox to print my pictures because they have foot the bill for **** ups not too dissimilar to this in the past. Had they printed 45,000 photos for me with a red tinge and then offered to let me have them for £750 I would have told them where to go, and naturally never used them again).

There's no way around it really. If the OP offers 50/50 he risks offending the client, and that's no way for a small business to operate.
 
do you want the clients business again?

in any case it's the clients fault as they signed off on the proofs. They don't call it proof reading for nothing!
 
yes we want more business from the client.

and if we could afford too we might consider redo'ing the whole thing for him for free, but as a small business that just isnt an option at the moment.

i have made the offer to him and am waiting for his reply...
 
if i ordered a computer from dell asking them to spec me a desktop to include an intel processor and they sent me a spec back that clearly said AMD PROCESSOR and i said it was ok for them to build for me. That'd be my fault, i wouldn't blame dell - i'd be annoyed at them for going against my instructions but i said it was ok to build so it should be ok to build.

Just like if i went into a subway and asked for a sandwich but no vegetables and then the sandwich maker asks me (maybe accidentally) - do i want veg and in my confused state, i say YES. Again - that's my fault.
 
benneh said:
Had they printed 45,000 photos for me with a red tinge and then offered to let me have them for £750 I would have told them where to go, and naturally never used them again).
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Would you have given the go-ahead to print 45,000 photos if the example they had shown you had a red tinge? Of course you wouldn't.

The blame lies entirely with the customer. Mistakes happen, whoever you are - that's the whole point of the proof. Sure, you can try and cut a deal with the customer if you want to do business with them again in the future, but the customer doesn't have a leg to stand on.
 
Yes but the point is if I was the customer you would lose my business for this mistake. It was made by the printers in the transcribing and then not picked up as it would have looked like a minor detail to the customer.

We all agree legally the blame lies finally with the customer who agreed to have the document printed.

This does not mean that he will accept the mistake lightly and I am sure it will affect him in the future, you will have no recommended business from let alone repeat business.

Tough call if you can not afford it, I would offer as much as you can afford to keep him sweet, and if he still is not happy then you can forget about it and just move on with extra checking step to stop this from happening.
 
Paulus said:
after sleeping on it and reading all your replies (thank you)

we are goign to offer the client to reprint at a 50/50 split as a good will gesture

will report back his reply
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Only 50/50 on the reprint?

So that means the customer has to pay 150% of orginal quote to get what they wanted?

Or am I reading it wrongly?
 
I dont know if i follow. Did he provide you with the correct phone number before you sent him a proof? Or after? If before then technically it should have the correct number on the proof and you should reprint them free as it is your error realistically, as you input the number wrongly. If there was no mention of an incorrect number and you sent the proof, to which they OK'd and signed off on and then after this they mailed you through a correct telephone number, then I don't see how the customer can expect the business to reprint them for free as it is a customer error.

A proof is used to check every detail, its not just to see the design, its to check EVERYTHING is how it should be and every detail is correct, all the small print etc.
If you get given a proof and just glance at it without checking all the details then you are a bit of a numpty.
 
CDj-Rossi said:
I dont know if i follow. Did he provide you with the correct phone number before you sent him a proof? Or after? If before then technically it should have the correct number on the proof and you should reprint them free as it is your error realistically, as you input the number wrongly.

A proof is used to check every detail, its not just to see the design, its to check EVERYTHING is how it should be and every detail is correct, all the small print etc.
If you get given a proof and just glance at it without checking all the details then you are a bit of a numpty.
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kind of contradicting yourself here.

1'st you say, if he gave us the correct number it should have been on the proof and we should reprint it for free

and then you that a proof is used to check everything and he is a numpty.
 
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