Registered: Nov 2001
Location: Brasilia, Brazil Formerly known as: Maaz
Wow, I always suspected bad business were extremely greedy, but I believe I have come across a potential contender for the title of "most dishonest desperate business strategy".
As some of you may know, I have a small office in a Japanese language school here in Brasília, where I get to practise the language everyday. I really love the people here, and I used to work here both as a teacher and as a(n amateur) graphic designer.
Every 5 years or so, the school self-publishes a book to celebrate the anniversary, and for whatever reason, they decided to switch to a new printing house this year and "go pro". Someone recommended to them a printer that already did some jobs for a Japanese governmental agency, and that's the one they picked.
I'm not sure if they're printers or grifters. Probably both.
Given the lack of professionals here, we just export all the content to a high-quality PDF and send it to the printing house. This printer, however, complained it was not possible to print from a pdf file, and wanted to charge us two thousand dollars for the conversion to InDesign format. The school just couldn't afford this, so I phoned my brother - a professional graphic designer - who offered to do the same job for 45 dollars, as it was really a simple task.
They've just contacted the school saying "the colour scheme isn't right because [my brother] used RGB instead of CMYK", and offered to fix this so-called problem for yet another 400 dollars (although my brother did use CMYK in the first place).
This has been going on for a whole week now, and I'm surprised by how many excuses they find to charge for completely unnecessary services. I wonder how much money they got from the governmental agency that recommended them.
Originally said by Maurice Moss
I came here to kick ass and drink milk... and I've just finished my milk
Aug-17-2012 21:11
meriter
...
Registered: May 2009
Location: Chicago
quote:
Originally posted by Lira
not possible to print from a pdf file
Full retard.
As long as the .pdf was exported correctly they shouldn't have any problems. Is it being run on a digital press? It's not 1990 the front end will convert RGB images to CMYK automatically, but will alter the colors a bit. Let me know if you have any questions or need some quick work done I got nothing going on today (I've been in printing for ~10 years)
Aug-17-2012 21:35
Lira
Moderator Marcus Secundus
Registered: Nov 2001
Location: Brasilia, Brazil Formerly known as: Maaz
Actually, I believe they're trying to scam us, and I've already told the principal the things they say make no sense. I will definitely contact you if I have any questions (thanks, by the way).
But it's come to a point where I don't know if they're really incompetent or just the most dishonest people I've ever seen in my life - but it's got to be one of these two options. As I was talking to the principal about how dodgy these people are, she also said they claimed that because we sent them a pdf file, it was not possible to print the pictures (huh?!) and the text was too bright (I'm pretty sure this can be fixed just recalibrating the printer, right?).
I warned the principal these people are most likely fooling us... but Japanese people are all about hierarchy and group work, so my opinion counts very little (as I'm just the computer-savvy smart-arse scholar who comes here for the free coffee) and the governmental agency that recommended these bastards are - in a way - above us.
Originally said by Maurice Moss
I came here to kick ass and drink milk... and I've just finished my milk
Aug-17-2012 22:16
Moongoose
Supreme tranceaddict
Registered: Apr 2003
Location: Celje, Slovenia
Why dont you (or the school) simply drop them a nice email asking how/in which format would they like the material delivered, that you appreciate their offer but that you prefer to do these things in house. Then if they dont ignore the email, just email the appropriate stuff back yourself, or since meriter volunteered, ask him to give it a go if theres not too much stuff to adjust (probably wont be since, as you said, they are probably fucking with you).
Also, it seems you have been busy this week but im going to ask anyway, any timeline on when we can expect your idiot proof explanation of hangul that you mentioned in the olympics thread that you would put together for those interested?
