cravedog revisited

so like after being a bit unhappy with the print job on the cds and not getting any response back from Cravedog CD Manufacturing, well about a month later i posted a review on Yelp.

then on march 27, i arrive home after working a 14 hour double to find this in my inbox:

Man, that is one lame-ass post you posted about us on Yelp. I called you
back twice trying to get in touch with you about your issues and I never
heard back from YOU. What a horrible way to air your grievances.

I think I offered you an absolute ton of time answering your questions
throughout the whole process and to slam me/us now is pretty disappointing.
In fact, I gave you more time than about 95% of our clients because this
seemed to be your first project and I honestly wanted this to be a good
experience for you. I believe I was very patient and as helpful as I could
have been. Try and get that kind of service from Discmakers or Oasis. Not
only would you have paid more for your overall package, you would have had
to pay for your graphic design advice from them. We gave this to you for
free.

I'm sorry if you're crap at Photoshop. Our designer did catch some serious
mistakes and you should thank him for that instead of berating him/us in
public. From what I understand, if he didn't catch the mistakes you made
with your original design it would have looked a LOT worse that it does now.
This is a courtesy service we offer to our clients. We do the best we can,
but CANNOT be held accountable for the mistakes of our clients. Doesn't
that make good business sense? It's just not logical to think that we would
guarantee a bad design that our client is ultimately responsible for.
That’s the reason people hire professional designers - to prevent mistakes.

Basically you pay for what you get Eric. We usually charge for that kind of
service ($75/hour), but we try our best to look out for our clients
regardless of their ability to pay for that service or hire their own
professional designers, but at the end of the day it's up to you, the
client, to approve your final artwork. We gave you every opportunity to do
that. Please don't blame us for your mistake or oversight. If you had
hired us to do your graphic design and for some odd reason this mistake
still found its way on to your final print, we would have re-run the project
for you at no cost with no questions asked.

Regarding the proofs - we don't offer proofs, because they don't really show
what the final product will look like 100%. You need a good graphic
designer to create the artwork so that you know exactly what you're getting
in the end. What you see on a computer screen is not always what you're
going to get back. I believe our designer suggested that you utilize a
different design program to design your artwork so as to avoid mistakes like
this, which would have probably prevented the error you speak of. It looks
like you chose to ignore his advice there.

On top of the above, yes it did take me a week to call you the first time
you called - my wife and I just had our first child and you see I've been a
little tied up. I was also out sick for a few days around then as well.
We're all human and we've all got our own issues. You could have called our
designer if you were intent on getting to the bottom of your problem. That
seems to be where most of your complaints lie anyway, right? Was it more
important to try and discredit us in public or get to the bottom of your
issues so that you didn't make the same mistake again? I guess I already
know the answer to that.

This is all a bit disappointing Eric. You see, the CD manufacturing biz is
experiencing some tough times at the moment if you hadn't noticed. Posts
like these are bad for our business. Posts like that are bad for anyone's
business. We work really, really hard here and we try our very best to be
fair in all that we do. We treat all of our clients like they're our
friends because we know what it's like out there in the big bad world of
corporate America. If you wanted corporate American service, you probably
should have gone to Discmakers. They would have taken your money and had a
good laugh about it all. We're not laughing here - that's not who we are.
We feel horrible that you are not happy with your experience with us. Had
you and I had a chance to talk or if you had bothered to call us back again,
you would have found that regardless of whose fault this was, we probably
would have offered you some kind of discount on this project or a credit
towards a re-order or your next project. Unfortunately you have left us in
a less than giving mood. I guess that's what "petty and negative" energy
will get you in the end.

I read some of your other Yelp posts and they're all pretty negative - you
seem to try and drag a lot of other businesses down with you too, which I
guess I just don't agree with. They all seem like small businesses that are
just trying to carve out their own living I might add. What's that old
adage? "If you can't say anything nice...." I'm a big believer in that and
I'm a big believer in Karma. Maybe if you focused on the good positive
energy out there, good things would start to happen for you instead of the
bad energy that seems to be following you around. Keep the faith, man. Not
everyone is out to get you or do you a disservice.

I wish this all would have ended better for both of us. Good luck to you
with your CD. We do, in all honesty, wish you lots of luck with it.

All the best,
Michael

so i had gone and had a drink, and with a little bit of help from jessica, this is the response i composed:

Hi Michael,

So it takes a review on Yelp to actually get you to respond and contact me with my issues with how the print job on my CD came out! Like, wow. You never responded to my email until now. You called me ONCE. I called you back, left a message, NEVER heard from you again. Whatever, dude. Y'all need to be up front if what you do is out source the print job and the replication job and are essentially a middle man. Don't throw promises at me about how you would have potentially made it up to me with credits for a re-order or towards my next project. That rings so hollow. So terribly terribly hollow coming months after the fact and only because I posted a negative review on Yelp. I am very thankful that Matt caught some of my problems with the layout - that was awesome and great. I am so very thankful that the print job didn't come out more fucked up. But you all should have given me the option of a hard copy proof from whoever the hell you outsourced the print job. I mean, I was already spending a shit load of money, I would have dropped an extra $100-200 on hard copy proof, especially to avoid the conversation we are now having. But as I recall, that just wasn't possible - lamerz!

So, um, congratulations on the birth of your child. That's not relevant to our business. If you were unavailable to respond to my concerns, someone else from Cravedog could have made an effort to reach me. It seems pretty obvious to me what is happening here. You failed to ensure customer satisfaction, got a negative Yelp review, your boss is probably pretty pissed, and so you spout off this epic and immature email to me about how I'm negative and petty. I mean, c'mon dude! I paid you guys $2300, wasn't completely happy, aired it out pretty neutrally in a accepted public forum, and here you are shitting on me. Fuck you!

Y'all were recommend to me by the guy that mastered my CD. He did a great job. I hold no grievance towards him. Fortunately now, when someone is considering your company for their business, they can go on Yelp and hear about what happened to me and take that into accordance with their decision. You come at me for being a negative bitch in my reviews, y'all could have given me much more for the money I spent. I demand perfection and I insist on excellence. To say that you couldn't offer proofs cuz they wouldn't show what they would like is a bullshit argument through and through. I have friends in the printing industry, friends who have made CDs before, and now after this experience I have learned that what you have offered me is substandard. A hard copy proof is industry standard. I had Discmakers emailing me everyday begging me for their business, so much that I had to tell them to leave me alone, cuz I wanted to go with a smaller company. Yet while I thought I was dealing with a company from Portland Oregon, my CDs shipped from Terre Haute Indiana.

I understand, you're bummed, you got a negative Yelp review. I tried to be even-handed and fair. And this is what it took to even get you to respond to my concerns of over two months ago. Pathetic. But this is not the end of the world. So all I ask is that you lease return my Masters. And please give me the contact information for the Manufacturing facility that pressed my discs, should I require additional runs. You could have handled this better and your email response in a more mature way. Grow up. I admitted to my mistakes and accept them. You, and Cravedog failed me.

-Eric

and thusly they responded:

Dear Eric,

We'll return your masters, but if you want a reorder you would need to go
through Cravedog. We don't outsource our work. I'll arrange for everything
to be returned to you now.

Michael

Boosh! you know i have to question whether they can claim exclusivity to the glass master, which i paid for, and that they out-sourced the job to. i haven't yet tried to contact the company that actually did the replicating in terre haute, cuz it ain't like these damn things are selling like hot-cakes or anything. anyways, i guess the lesson really is, be extra careful when doing yr artwork, and choose a company to do your job that has better customer service. cuz if they had really given a shit about making it up to me, they would have contacted me immediately and we could have worked this shit out amicably.