Client disregards advice resulting in faulty $10k order of embroidered company t-shirts: 'Have fun refunding a $10k order!'

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Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
Sep 13, 2024 1:00 PM EDT

It's amazing how often a person or an organization will pay for services, products, and the expertise that comes along with them, only to refuse to accept the advice that they're paying for. In a moment of ego-fueled hubris, they suddenly decide that they know what's best, expert advice be damned. 

This happens at all levels of design, technology, retail, and manufacturing and is something that comes up now and again in online discourse that anyone offering specialized services to clients will certainly resonate with. 

The old adages might tell us that "The customer knows best" and that "The customer is always right in matters of taste," but working with them, it quickly becomes apparent that this is not really ever the case. The problem is that they'll insist that they have the right to things, meaning the success of your services will hinge on your ability to convince them otherwise, engaging in wizardry and convoluted scrips that only Christopher Nolan could follow in order to incept the idea that your ideas were actually your client's ideas in the first place.

Of course, if your client is obscenely impolite to you in the first instance that you try to save them from folly, you might forgo the idea of inception and instead leave them to meet their own own fate…

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  • 01
    wwww
    via Jacques Dillies-
  • 02
    Don't bother you with quality-control emails anymore? Have fun refunding a 10k order! M I work for an embroidery company that embroiders logos onto uniform shirts. There is this one particular shirt we get all the time that has a diagonal closure, so the left side of the chest is essentially covered by a huge flap coming from the right side.
    via scr3wballl
  • 03
    There is such little room on the left side that any logo bigger than an inch looks like it's going into the persons armpit. After a few complaints, we made it policy to only allow that shirt to put logos on the right.
    via scr3wballl
  • 04
    A big company we work with likes to make massive orders with generalized embroidery placement (ex. 10 different types of garments, all embroidered with a logo on the left chest). Whenever I would see that this particular shirt was in the mix, I would reach out to them to let them know we needed to switch the logo to the right side.
    via scr3wballl
  • 05
    One (difficult) manager from that company reached out to their client with my suggestion, and got an earful because the client insisted that their logo could ONLY be placed on the left, due to company policy. Instead of smoothing it over with her client, this rep took it out on me. She sent me a very aggressive email stating that we were perfectly capable of embroidering this shirt on the left side because we had done it in the past, and to STOP
    via scr3wballl
  • 06
    blowing up her inbox with our "suggestions for a better embroidery location." From now on, whatever embroidery location the order requests is FINAL. I saved the email and got my boss's blessing to immediately stop all quality control emails for this company, "per manager"
    via scr3wballl
  • 07
    One day a HUGE order comes in, ALL diagonal-closure shirts, ALL left side embroidery. I maliciously complied and sent the order on its way, with no hassle to the manager. A week later an executive from that company emails me, horrified. He forwarded photos of the clients shirts, all with the logos in the armpits. He said they were having to refund the client over 10k and that the client was in an uproar, never wanting to order shirts from them again! Why did we NOT tell them this was a bad locat
    via scr3wballl
  • 08
    I didn't say a word, simply forwarded the email the manager sent me, telling me verbatim that I was to no longer waste the company's time making useless suggestions for those shirts :)
    via scr3wballl
  • 09
    Editing to add fallout: It was confirmed they had to do a big fat refund and I did not see a re- order, so I suspect the client dismissed them as a vendor (was a huge client, think a very swanky hotel brand, we don't usually get emails from the executives so I think they were really hoping for big bucks with these guys, oh well). As far as manager goes, I suspect she was demoted. They sent us a VERY polite, groveling email introducing a new manager, and requesting that we resume our quality cont
    via scr3wballl
  • 10
    One more edit to add photo, I can't post the real one for privacy reasons but I found an example blouse that has a similar ratio as the mentioned shirt, so that you guys have an idea:
    via scr3wballl
  • 11
    mcfuzzum 3y ago "We never have the money to do it right, but we always. have the money to do it twice."
    via scr3wballl
  • 12
    UseDaSchwartz My MIL has this happen a lot. She owns a printing and engraving company. She says at least once a year a client (not the same one each year) will get a new person in charge of ordering. They'll want something done and she'll explain why that either won't work, or won't look good. She's been doing it for 30 years so she knows her stuff and suggests a better way.
    via scr3wballl
  • 13
    They always insist and she'll make up some samples, the client won't like them and will end up doing it the way she suggested.
    via scr3wballl
  • 14
    [deleted] Sometimes it has to cost them money before they learn. In the marketing side of the company I work for, they have the client spend the money for one example of each request so they can see what it will look like, so like this doesn't happen.
    via scr3wballl
  • 15
    jcacca This is so relatable as a seamstress who also does embroidery. People don't get it, but you tried to explain. They got exactly what they asked for!
    via scr3wballl
  • 16
    C PdxPhoenixActual My question would be "why is this shirt still an option at all?"
    via scr3wballl
  • 17
    saltymarge I work in promo. I love when my decorators tell me something I ordered is going to look bad. Because what do I know? I'm basically a broker with a little bit of knowledge about a lot of different printing techniques. You're the expert in your technique and holding the garment. Love when I'm told something isn't going to turn out the way we intended so we can fix it before anyone is
    via scr3wballl
  • 18
    Je... Had exact same thing with an online promotion for a major brand. It was simple, buy product, get code printed on insert, put code into online contest to see if you got an Instant Win. Client insists on a "splash page" with a flashing road sign that said "Let's go on a road trip!".
    via scr3wballl
  • 19
    Told the client that with millions+ of users, our experience shows that you cannot expect people to make associative leaps of logic. Just because the promotion was "road trip" themed didn't mean users would intuit that they need to click the sign. Told clients to scrap the splash page, and if they insisted on keeping it, the sign should at the very least clearly read "CLICK HERE TO ENTER CONTEST" or something similar.
    via scr3wballl
  • 20
    They wouldn't listen, president of the company kept scoffing at us for making "a big deal out of a simple wording preference." Within 1 day we blew through the 40 hours of support that was budgeted and within 3 days were up to 200 hours of support. All for the same issue: "where do I go to enter my contest code?"
    via scr3wballl
  • 21
    We projected another 3000 hours of support as the contest continued to ramp up in popularity, and projected costs to be around a quarter of a million dollars. All of a sudden our expertise was "valued" and they took our suggestion and changed the wording (after paying an additional support charge to the tune of $9K USD and another 3K to "refresh" their support hours.
    via scr3wballl
  • 22
    | don't understand the arrogance of companies that engage experts to do something they can't then second-guess every suggestion. If you don't trust the experts to make the right decisions and guide you, don't hire them, hire some loser in his tighty- whities in his basement who'll agree to anything for a payday.
    via scr3wballl
  • 23
    DBZSix • 3y ago I did quality control for four years in manufacturing. Went through two managers, both of their favorite phrases that I heard at least once a week was "Oh, it'll be fine." There were quite a few times that we had to rerun a partial order or rework product because they didn't listen to me.
    via scr3wballl
  • 24
    ...Though, I will admit there were times I was also too and they would have accepted the product. But, better safe than sorry!
    via scr3wballl
  • 25
    NeedACountdown... I worked at an embroidery shop for years. I feel your pain.
    via scr3wballl
  • 26
    slack_skills A long time ago I used to work for a small embroidery company. A bigger company sometimes would pass work onto us. To cut on costs they would also provide the design in machine format. Every time management would ask me to decrease the color steps to save some time, and it was always urgent.
    via scr3wballl
  • 27
    Once came a green and white design with no less than 5 color steps, some one came and said: "just make it two, we need it NOW". Mind you it had a green background with a white banner and some green text over it. Most details turned ok, but the text got covered by the banner.
    via scr3wballl
  • 28
    The good thing was the person manning the machine noticed and corrected by passing only that bit again and warned us so we could fix it.
    via scr3wballl
  • 29
    couchjellyfish I had a boss that once told me "Quality Assurance is like the United Nations: people don't think they need them until they really, really need them." Or after they really needed them.
    via scr3wballl
  • 30
    ErixWorxMemes I have worked screen- printing, embroidery, and promotional products industry for at least a couple decades and can confirm: Always gonna be a sales rep, a customer, a manager, or SOMEONE who "knows what they want" and just refuses to listen to the people who have actually worked with that product.
    via scr3wballl
  • 31
    Having worked in embroidery (at the set up end of things, not production), the worst is small lettering. Why don't you believe us when we say it's not going to work? "Well, can't you just try it?" And the salesman says yes, and passes along that request to me, and I die a little bit inside, knowing we are just wasting time and thread producing a sample of illegible gibberish
    via scr3wballl
  • 32
    atxcats Those last 5 words of your post are pure gold.
    via scr3wballl
  • 33
    EnigmaGuy Funny how quality is easily dismissed and 'unnecessary'.. until it's not. Reminds me of the great layoffs of 2018 at my company where HR came in with a small force and walked out 15 of the 30 people in the shop and coordination offices.
    via scr3wballl
  • 34
    Of those 15, 2 were our quality control team. Need a deviation authorization because something is out of spec? They verify it against the prints and get with engineering to get it. A dimension call out changed on the prints? They'd find it and update the quality sheets we use for recording data. The biggest thing they did? Checked incoming. parts against the latest released version to make sure they were in spec.
    via scr3wballl
  • 35
    To this day, we still have issues occasionally because we just receive parts in and the only thing the replacement quality person they hired does is badly update the documents for us to record data - I usually update my departments myself because I got tired of fixing their ups. They still up the other departments so it doesn't go unnoticed.
    via scr3wballl
  • 36
    It's unfortunate, to because sometimes we'll have riveted or welded a whole orders worth of parts then when we go to function it at the end find out somethings binding or colliding because the supplier sent an old revision of parts from an earlier CAD and no one verified the parts until after the damage is done. With them being prototype parts, I usually scrap enough probably every three months or so that is the equivalent to paying off most peoples houses.
    via scr3wballl
  • 37
    HelloAndTheEmpl... I also work as an embroidery machine operator and we have a salesperson that does this kind of stuff all the time and constantly wants. us to embroider garments that aren't fit for it. It's gotten to the point that if I go to the manager with a question about a logo not fitting or a hat that has dye. bleed or what have you she automatically asks who the salesperson on that order is.
    via scr3wballl

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