We recently had a publication with a distribution of over 1/2 million copies that had a print run that was not to any standard of any publication we had printed in the past with any other printer. The printer had made many guarantees to us about their standards in all of our initial conversations with their teams. There were a variety of issues throughout the run. The problem that exists most consistently throughout the run is that the glue did not seem to make it the full length of the bind of magazine. In some cases the bind was snapping and pages were breaking loose. We are only eliminating the ones where the bind seems to breakdown. There were also spines that were rolling so far that you could not clearly read the text on the spine. A variety of trim problems also existed. In some of the magazines, the top and bottom was not being properly trimmed off so the fold was often not even cut off in spots. In other cases the trim on the top and bottom was so much that it cut text off an ad that was on the back cover. There were also problems with the trim on the outside of the pages so certain pages within the magazine were trimmed in so far that it cut text off on the tabs or it was too far out so you could see the bleed marks that should have been completely trimmed off as well as many having very severe knife marks from a dull blade. We have even found magazines with missing signatures. There are many more minor problems as well that I won't go into detail on.
After several weeks of back and forth with the printer where they continuously told us that they felt everything we were seeing was within 'print industry standards', they finally came to see the problems in person. During our initial visit, they communicated they will help us to get the problems resolved, but then came back later and decided they would not help us to sort the good from the bad. They determined they would give us a very small credit that would equate to approximately 65K magazines which we felt we had many more copies that have issues than that. After telling them we did not think that was acceptable resolution, they ceased communication with us. We had paid the printer half of the money up front for the job. Our clients were expecting magazines in January and we desperately want to fill orders for them, so once the lines of communication were no longer open, we consulted our lawyers and began a manual sort process to begin trying to separate the good magazines from the bad. We now have a team of temps who are working diligently and we are documenting the process very carefully because we are not only out the money we paid to the printer, but now the cost of sorting through the magazines. We estimate the sort process will take us 5 weeks to complete because the problems are not located to a particular area of the run, but are spread throughout the coarse of the run. We are yielding about 50% of the magazines as bad, and that is with letting some of the smaller issues go through since they do not make the magazines unusable. Once we know how many magazines that we have that are at least usable, we plan to go back and print the rest of the run with a different printer. We have continued to communicate to the printer about the steps we are taking to correct the situation, but we have had no communication back.
I would love to have some comments on some of the problems from an industry perspective, similar experiences people have had, what different approaches other might would have taken in the same situation and what feedback on how we've handled the situation to this point.
After several weeks of back and forth with the printer where they continuously told us that they felt everything we were seeing was within 'print industry standards', they finally came to see the problems in person. During our initial visit, they communicated they will help us to get the problems resolved, but then came back later and decided they would not help us to sort the good from the bad. They determined they would give us a very small credit that would equate to approximately 65K magazines which we felt we had many more copies that have issues than that. After telling them we did not think that was acceptable resolution, they ceased communication with us. We had paid the printer half of the money up front for the job. Our clients were expecting magazines in January and we desperately want to fill orders for them, so once the lines of communication were no longer open, we consulted our lawyers and began a manual sort process to begin trying to separate the good magazines from the bad. We now have a team of temps who are working diligently and we are documenting the process very carefully because we are not only out the money we paid to the printer, but now the cost of sorting through the magazines. We estimate the sort process will take us 5 weeks to complete because the problems are not located to a particular area of the run, but are spread throughout the coarse of the run. We are yielding about 50% of the magazines as bad, and that is with letting some of the smaller issues go through since they do not make the magazines unusable. Once we know how many magazines that we have that are at least usable, we plan to go back and print the rest of the run with a different printer. We have continued to communicate to the printer about the steps we are taking to correct the situation, but we have had no communication back.
I would love to have some comments on some of the problems from an industry perspective, similar experiences people have had, what different approaches other might would have taken in the same situation and what feedback on how we've handled the situation to this point.
