Just thought this recent experience maybe helpful.
I do holiday and sickness cover for prepress & finishing at several different print shops and when they are overloaded with work.
A long time client got a job in from a local authority here in the U.K.
Unfortunately it needed a bit of prepress work which the printer did free of charge because they thought it would help them get some more work from this client.
This practice continued and more work came in.
The prepress department grew to four people (not including me).
The printer has just gone into bankruptcy.
It appears that the substantial increase in work took up so much prepress effort that other clients were let down, but the owner didn't care because he had shed loads of work coming in from this local authority.
It turns out that this local authority know what they are doing and have already bankrupted three other printers over the last 10 years.
Their attitude appears to be that they know, but don't care.
They just move on and search for another printer (sucker) who they bamboozle into doing free prepress.
Do you get this sort of thing in the U.S. ?
I do holiday and sickness cover for prepress & finishing at several different print shops and when they are overloaded with work.
A long time client got a job in from a local authority here in the U.K.
Unfortunately it needed a bit of prepress work which the printer did free of charge because they thought it would help them get some more work from this client.
This practice continued and more work came in.
The prepress department grew to four people (not including me).
The printer has just gone into bankruptcy.
It appears that the substantial increase in work took up so much prepress effort that other clients were let down, but the owner didn't care because he had shed loads of work coming in from this local authority.
It turns out that this local authority know what they are doing and have already bankrupted three other printers over the last 10 years.
Their attitude appears to be that they know, but don't care.
They just move on and search for another printer (sucker) who they bamboozle into doing free prepress.
Do you get this sort of thing in the U.S. ?