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Menu Design problem caused by the customer – suggestions req
Hi All.
We offer menus/printing, designing in house and subing it out to a big print house, as most of us do on here.
But this area is one where we oftern fall out with the customers over amendments/changes to text layout etc.
The situation is this, customer requires a price for menus, they except our price. We ask them some questions on design lay out, colours etc. we then ask them for what is going in the menu along with the cost of that item.
As you know, they want a 1000,000 items on the menu, all with photos of that item (but cannot provide a photo) and as big as possible.
We design the menu, print it off to show the customer, who then takes it away, comes back 2 days later with another page of items to be included and a request to put an extra 5p on all items….. As you know we don`t design a layout with a space in the design for items missed out….
Last week we fired a customer who couldn`t except the idea that he has caused us more work which was at least 1 hr, we wanted another £35 off him for the extra work. In the end we gave him his money back and told him never to come back.
This must happen to most of us, what do you do to stop this. We are tired of giving a quote only to be asked to add this or just do that after the deed is done.. all for free, sparks fly when money is requested.
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4 Replies
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Denise. how can you give them a price before you know what is going in to them ??
I use to do quite a bit of this sort of work & always made it clear that I would require all the info for the menus BEFORE any design work was started. Also pointed out that if they came back with amendments after a proof had been done it would require extra work which would be charged for. Also pointed out that it wasn’t an easy job to change them or rearrange things so it would be a reasonable sum rather than just an extra couple of quid.
Repeated this every time I saw them & it’s amazing the difference it makes, didn’t lay anything out until they assured me I had it all.
Did do minor changes once the proof had been completed without charge but if they wanted all sorts of extras then they paid for it.Another thing I did was to ensure they had checked & signed for artwork before the menus were produced including Spelling, had a customer refuse to pay once because of a spelling mistake so got wise to that one lol
Problem is that they don’t understand the process & think you can make the changes with a couple of mouse clicks. One of those things that you really need to educate the customer about, what doesn’t happen is that generally they are also looking for any excuse to get a discount.
Oh meant to say, I have several food & drink CD’s so finding suitable, usable images for menus wasn’t normally a problem.
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I used to do nothing else but menu design for 5 or 6 years day in, day out so i know where you are coming from.
Designs would be changed from 1 fold to 2 folds to 3 fold and back to 2 folds, etxra items added, taken out, and price changes were always being altered.
I even had some customers and i kid you not, ask me how much they should charge for some dishes. 🙄
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Not wanting to cause any offence but given the general standard of spelling and grammar in the OP I’m not surprised that there were some unhappy customers.
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Had to laugh when I saw this , i am having the exact same issue with a customer and his restaurant menus . Keep changing , not understanding the time it takes the alter things etc .
Have to say this one job has taught me a lot about the printing side of the business and why I dont really get involved in it
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