Bye Bye Avery

[harveysignsks]

Got a letter this morning from gregory.

GREGORY will discontinue our distribution of the Avery brand of sign making and digital media films. This discontinuation will become effective January 30, 2006!

Maybe they'll think next time they try to stonewall people out of their money and time!
Thanks Gregory!

[jayhawksigns]

It seems like the Avery Sucks Club gets bigger every day.

[Derf]

How about the "Avery cost me a $1,000 dollar club" or "$5,000 club"

[Dave Drane]

Some people take a long time to learn!!

[xtremegraphics]

I use Avery on every job we do and never had any problems yet!

[Bigdawg]

We used Avery A6 when we first started. The first windows I cut before I knew what the heck I was doing were our own. When I cut it I didn't know about welding pieces together so there would be no cutlines and overlapping letters had a small cut in them.
We put them up anyway because they looked fine... to start with. The letters butted up to each other when we first put them up and you had to really look to see the cutline. These pictures show where I screwed up the cut and what has happened since they were done in August of this year. That means that in about 4 months the Avery shrank enough to leave an 1/8" gap.
Needess to say that's why we don't use Avery anymore.

[WVB]

I personally do not use Avery anymore due to all of this hub bub. But Stacy you are using A6 which is a calandered film. You will receive shrinkage with cal no matter Oracal, Avery, 3M what have you. We live in the panhandle of Texas it snows here. Average life of films here is roughly 3 years due to the elments of snow, sleet, hail, HOT summers etc. Now if you were using A8 or a cast film then I would side with you on this one. Due to cal. its expected.

[jayhawksigns]

We have some signs that I can give pictures of that used A8, it was the only vinyl we used at the time, but I don't think that there is doubt anymore that this happened.

Luckily, most of the signs were at ballparks that get changed every year anyway, and from the stands it isn't visible.

[Bigdawg]

Good point Will, but the majority of what we do is with calendered... I haven't seen the Oracal 651 shrink like this and we've done some 2-color jobs with Oracal colors butted up that didn't do this... I was surprised that our windows shrank so quickly. I know I'm still learning (and have a long way to go!) but at this point Avery just scares me. It may just be a bad rap but it's enough to make me think twice.

[Derf]

1) Reflective: Adhesive Problems for years (5 years ago had to re letter 5 fire trucks) Use 3M now no problems

2) Print Media EZ: Adhesive FAILURE. (last year did 18+ jobs over again including my own sign) use 3M and Orajet now no problems

3) Jupiter Banner: (FURBALL) I will say no more... (Jupiter Banner seems to be better now so I still use it)

I have first hand lost my A$$ on AVERY Vinyls

[Fred Weiss]

I use Avery on every job we do and never had any problems yet!

That you've heard about!

You may find you have substantial problems if you go out and look. Lots of customers won't call you if they have a problem. They just think it's something they did wrong or that you use cheap materials and don't know what you're doing, so they look for another sign maker.

[THATgirl]

I will never forget when a customer called to say his lettering was falling off his sign. It was the first time I ever used Avery. He had picked a certain blue that he liked.....so we used Avery. I complained....avery called and also sent out a roll of new vinyl. (It didn't stick either) So then Avery told me to make up a few samples with different type of paint and test it and keep track. I told them the type of paint I used and why don't THEY do the testing. I haven't used Avery since.

[xtremegraphics]

Fred I pass by lots of jobs I have done every day and have not noticed any problems... I live in a smaller town ,only me and one other shop doing signs and we talk back and forth all the time.. Maybe we are getting a differant product here in Canada.. Who knows, but I don't hear anyone complaining about any of my jobs... Only complaint is the price :0) seems we sign guys always charge to much.........

[Derf]

I think they have a few good batches of adhesive and a ton of bad batches. You just got a good batch of vinyl.

I did have a few customers that I contacted that I used EZ2000 on and they are not having any problems. Most however were happy I called and replaced the graphics for free.

Fred is correct, only one customer called to complain however when I saw my sign peeling after a few weeks I started to call around and sure enough customers had problems. I would have lost those customers or they would have bad mouthed me and I would have never found out.

[Techman]

I use Avery on every job we do and never had any problems yet!

YEs, and lots of people who smoke don't have cancer yet.. If you get cancer its 100% that you got it.. If you have a Avery Problem then you got an avery problem 100%..

I guess you are lucky. But then again when you only do a job every three months or so,, then the odds are in your favor.. IF you do 3 jobs a day,, Avery is not a good choice..

--Techman

[Marlene]

A rep from Gregory stopped in here a while ago and when I told him the reasons why I wouldn't use Avery, he sent me info on how they had fixed everything. I guess Greagory believed that all was good too until they ended up getting calls from people who where less than happy. Has anyone ever seen a post on any site from an Avery rep on this issue? I'm willing to bet that if an issue like this happen with Gerber vinyl, there would be Gerber reps all over the boards with info. I'll stick (no pun intended) with Gerber vinyl. My only problem with them is their lack of color choices. The chart looks like it it stuck in the 80's and has never been updated.

[roxym]

I just received a 50 yd. roll of Avery 8 (white) with an obvious manufacturing glitch, looks like rolled in wrinkles for about 30 feet. Any suggestions for a good 8 year vinyl with good conformability?

[keithack]

Same problem here.
Our shop has been using nothing but Avery for years. We've started to see alot of shrinkage on recent jobs (less than 1 year since installation) and we've finally decided to move on to something else. Our problem now is we really haven't tried any other brands, aside from Oracal 651 for racing stuff. Anyone have any preffered brands they would like to recommend for signs?

[Fred Weiss]

3M Scotchcal, Oracal 751 and Oracal 851.

[Karynsl]

We, too, have had several problems with Avery products. We are experiencing problems with the Chrome right now, and we can't get a rep to even return our call. I'm so glad Gregory is discontinuing the line. It's the ONLY way to get a company to really listen to you. If you haven't had problems with Avery, I agree that it is just a matter of time.