I was hired to wrap a vehicle and now they are mad at me... my blood pressure is through the roof!

[CSOCSO]

Im in a bit of a pickle and as of right now I am mad af. Not sure who am I should be mad at yet.... Yes.. in a perfect world, this could have been avoided but I wonder what you guys would do in my case. This is not gonna be short but I would love some help and your 2 cents. I will try to keep it as short as possible. I'm supposed to be on a phone call with them in the morning.
A Media company contacts me about a food truck to wrap. I'm supposed to print and install it. They tell me it will be only wrapped for 1 month so no need to use expensive material.
After I gave them a price they approved and gave me the files.

They gave me the design!!

These files were created in illustrator with a separate tif file linked to the vector file. Also, they had an outline for the food truck. Since I took measurements I have seen that some dimensions were off by many inches so (free of charge) I have adjusted everything! Everything looked fine to me. I printed everything out. I looked at the printer here and there when I could.. Everything looked ok but when I was laminating I realized that each side has 1 panel with a bottle on it that was low quality and pixelized. I went back to the file they sent me and looked at it and realized the linked image they had in the folder was a ONLY 3 inch image ( at 300 dpi) that was blown up to be 80 inches!
Looking at the design itself which was in 10th scale I could NOT see the issue unless I zoomed in like %300-400. Everything looked fine at %100 view. I feel the designer should have linked an image at the right size. I tried to resize the image to 80 inches at 72 dpi which looked a LOT better but still kinda pixelized. Everything was laminated at once so I I I only saw the issue when I was laminating. I have emailed them with pictures and told them we could either reprint the whole panel ( it will cost this much) or just reprint the bottles which have 2 inches of stroke so I could just reprint it a little bit bigger and overlay it and it would be basically half the price of the full panel. He asked me why he wasn't made aware of this PRIOR printing.
I explained to him I could not see the pixels when I looked at the file. Everything looked fine on the computer and I have looked at the print multiple times but out of the dozen panels printed, I did not manage the actually take a glimpse at the print right at the moment when those bottles were printing. Every time I looked at the print everything was sharp and looked good. At this point, I explained this to him and gave him the price and pictures, and told him what was the issue and why it happened. He emailed me "Go ahead an install".
Which I did. Then the email comes in the afternoon. 10 hours later when I installed both sides already:
"Have you started installing as yet?"
-Yes.. both sides. ( I answered)

He emailed back:
"You sent an email stating the side needed to be replaced then installed it?
You also laminated an inferior print
I’m dumbfounded
Before any more work is done I need a call …. This is beyond crazy
I’ve been in business for 22 years and have NEVER seen anything like this
A professional would have reviewed the files completely prior to printing on piece.
Stop all work until I speak with you."

Don't know what to say....Sure.. next time I should zoom into everything %500... Even if I did a test print I would have not seen it.
If they had sent these files to alwanwraps or weprintwraps to get it printed they would have printed it as-is; the same way. Unfortunately, my website does not have an upload button for files with a disclaimer of whatever you upload here that's what's gonna get printed. btw if I didn't adjust nearly everything then a bunch of text would have landed on tail lights on the back and other texts on the side across openings and whatever else. So I feel like I was already nice enough to look over their stuff I just missed that quality on the bottle because it wasn't visible.

 

[Notarealsignguy]

Tear it off And tell the guy to lose your number. If he's been doing it for 20 years, why didn't he do it himself?

 

[CSOCSO]

btw I just checked again.. I zoomed in so much that the wheel of the food truck could not fit in my 34 inch monitor and still looked fine... I had to zoom in so much that the 3-inch reflector circle was as big as 1/3 of my screen in order to see the quality of the image.

 

[Bobby H]

If they designed the wrap themselves the technical problems are pretty much on them. Most of the time it's not necessary to link external image files anymore. Modern computers for graphics purposes usually have enough RAM and CPU horsepower to handle embedded art. Image files for vehicle wraps don't have to be extremely high in resolution. But crummy images merely grabbed off some web page probably aren't going to fly either.

If people want to go the DIY route on wrap design they need to know what they're doing. But they don't. And it's a big risk trusting a client's field measurements too. We usually insist on measuring any wrap project vehicle ourselves.

 

[ikarasu]

Customer supplied artwork.... Customer problem.

It's nice if you catch these things - but you shouldn't be expected to, or blamed if you don't. You didn't get paid to create or check the artwork. Unless you editing the file lowered the resolution, it's not on you.

If you upload a file to a wholesaler, they usually don't check it either. I'd tell the client he can either pay for it to be fixed, accept it as it is, or you'll pull everything off when you have time and he can have the vehicle back and find someone else to do it.

 

[CSOCSO]

If they designed the wrap themselves the technical problems are pretty much on them. Most of the time it's not necessary to link external image files anymore. Modern computers for graphics purposes usually have enough RAM and CPU horsepower to handle embedded art. Image files for vehicle wraps don't have to be extremely high in resolution. But crummy images merely grabbed off some web page probably aren't going to fly either.

If people want to go the DIY route on wrap design they need to know what they're doing. But they don't. And it's a big risk trusting a client's field measurements too. We usually insist on measuring any wrap project vehicle ourselves.

Yes I never trust designers thats why i have measured it and overlaid the correctly sized truck on top of their design and adjusted plenty enough stuff. I did not touch the linked image so i did not mess with it's size or quality. Everything else was vector. And the linked image was 300dpi and looked like a really good image for website or a flyer. lmao. At only 3 inches width it just wasnt good enough. I looked att he design and in 10th scale that 3 inch image was still good. When I scaled it to %1000 it became horrible looking. But I scaled it in the rip software. Can't have full scale food truck in illustrator.

 

[GAC05]

Quote back his email with the "Go ahead and install" part after you brought the issue to his attention.
Explain to him that in all your years in business, no professional media company has ever sent a webpage-screen-grab as a production file.
Ask him to arrange to get the high-rez image to you and you will overlay it. Only going to be on the truck for a month or two on cheap wrap film, an overlay is a non-issue.
If the money is right I wouldn't charge the additional - get it done - get paid, and put some red flags in the media company's file to watch out for incoming trash if you choose to continue taking their work.

 

[ColorCrest]

I agree with GAC05 except there is no reason to point out the customer's fault at this point in the transaction. The fault lies with both parties at this point.

Get the high-res file, finish the wrap, get paid, flag the account as GAC05 recommends.

Know that what you've given for free and overlooked as part of the print-for-pay trade process is a very significant profit center you've not been taking advantage of. Design files are not necessarily production art / print ready files. That's a key step in the printing world and somebody has to do the chargeable work even if it's an automated software robot.

 

[CanuckSigns]

If the files were supplied by a professional designer or marketing company I don't think you did anything wrong, he seems to be forgetting that he is also a professional, and as such he is responsible for the quality of his work as well.

Your first mistake was fixing his files in the first place, you should have emailed them that the design doesn't fit on the Truck and to please send corrected art, or you will fix it for $xxx. He is going to now say you should have noticed it when you fixed the other issues.

But if you brought the issue to their attention, and he said continue on, then it's on him, he's just trying to diflect the blame so his boss doesn't find out he messed up.

Having said that, I would probally reprint the 2 images and apply overtop for them, you said this was printed on cheap material, so it shouldn't cost you too much. At the end of the day it's your reputation on the line as well.

 

[brdesign]

Let me guess, they also expected you to give them wholesale pricing on the printing for supplying you with "print ready" artwork.

 

[Texas_Signmaker]

They supplied the artwork, it's their problem. You caught it and notified them when laminating (instead of just going ahead and applying the print and waiting for the customer to notice) that's more than most shops would do. They should apologize for the error and pay to have it overlaid.

 

[Bengt Backhaus]

He emailed me "Go ahead an install"

He should have checked the file on his end, once you made him aware of the problem.
As i see it the fault is with him since he told you to go ahead without checking his own files for himself.

 

[CanuckSigns]

I bet if you posted this same question on a Graphic design message board you would get completly different answers lol.

 

[Shred_signs]

if I didn't adjust nearly everything then a bunch of text would have landed on tail lights on the back and other texts on the side across openings and whatever else. So I feel like I was already nice enough to look over their stuff I just missed that quality on the bottle because it wasn't visible.

I'd never do this on my own.

"Looking at your file and measuring the vehicle there will be visual issues. I can fix it but that runs $60/hr. Let me know if you want me to handle or if you want your designer to do it."
Include screen shots or whatever you used to decide the graphics were wrong, tape measure photos etc.


If I learned anything in corporate America is "don't do any work for free, ever." It was something like 40% of our training was over wage theft/abuse.

 

[Gino]

While it seems like their fault, for us, we almost always check the entire content of files. I do this for the very reason of what you just ran into. I wanna know exactly what I'm printing. As for measuring and repositioning things, no way in heck I would ever change someone else's design/artwork/files. How long can it take to go over the entire file with a fine-toothed comb ?? Then..... explain to them their mistakes and let them do it..... not you.

 

[Johnny Best]

So someone hands you a gun on a movie set. You do not check it to see if it’s loaded. You pull the trigger, it goes off and kills someone. That’s your fault for not checking. It’s on you. It’s called protocol.

 

[CanuckSigns]

So someone hands you a gun on a movie set. You do not check it to see if it’s loaded. You pull the trigger, it goes off and kills someone. That’s your fault for not checking. It’s on you. It’s called protocol.

 

[RabidOne]

Our default is fail the job, inform the customer and let them decide what to do.
From bad experiences we learned to never do any changes without the customers approval. "Your file is low rez, wrong size, whatever", you fix it, or we fix it, you pay.

 

[CanuckSigns]

Our default is fail the job, inform the customer and let them decide what to do.
From bad experiences we learned to never do any changes without the customers approval. "Your file is low rez, wrong size, whatever", you fix it, or we fix it, you pay.

Exactly, Imagine if while you were fixing the file, something else changed, something small like some text shifted position, or a font got changed without you noticing, now you are on the hook to reprint the whole thing. Also it just encourages lazy behaviour from designers, and next thing you know they are sending you worse and worse artwork knowing you'll fix it for free for them.

 

[JBurton]

I guess you shouldn't have bothered to adjust anything... If you give a moose a muffin comes to mind.
Lesson learned, you need to include in your proposal/quote disclaimer that issues with customer supplied artwork are the responsibility of the customer's art department. XXX wrap co. will print whatever art file is supplied unless customer pre-authorizes any and all corrections by checking here. (including but not limited to modifications to artwork, costs added to the job, delay of work for approval processes, blood pressure medication costs, etc...)