My Thanks to Clyde at FedExOffice in White Plains
I had a nice whinge on Tuesday about how expensive it was to print marketing materials at FedExOffice, and instead bought a new laser printer. (It works beautifully). But rather than trim 500 4×5 cardstock marketing flyers myself, I decided to call FedEx and see what they would charge to machine trim them. They quoted me a reasonable $1.50 per cut (not per page, but each time the guillotine fell).
We estimated that this would cost between $9-$40, depending on how many times they needed to recut the batch. Comparing that with a long night with exacto knives, my wife and I decided to spend a little money and headed to the FedExOffice in White Plains.
My lovely wife did the dirty work as she’s awesome and more than knows her way around a graphic design studio (she’s more than helped out with the design of the site) while I tended to my day job via blackberry in the truck. When I went in to check, Clyde, the very nice older gentleman who was helping us, was doing his best to trim the flyers to our specifications. It was a nasty day, a front was passing through, dumping rain and rumbling thunder all day, and nobody was enjoying themselves. I could tell that the machine and Clyde were not getting along either.
Although the cuts where clean, the machine had left oil streaks on some of the edges, and the alignment was not perfect. My wife worked with Clyde, who turned out to be a man of infinite patience, and after an hour, got the marketing materials to where they were good enough to go. The problem, of course, was that Clyde had had to cut them about 100 times to get them right.
He went to the manager, a woman who’s name I regrettably did not get, and asked her how much he should charge us. Without thinking more than a second, she comped the entire job for us. I did not expect that, but I certainly do appreciate it. Neither my wife nor I complained or asked for a manager’s intervention. The manager understood that we expected a quick and painless service, and because their machine was a bit faulty, we had to wait a lot longer. Because of that, she decided to comp us rather than charge us a relatively small amount of money.
I may have complained about their prices, but I am impressed with their service. Because of that, I can tell you that when I do need duplicating services I will be going back there.