Custom Ink, their empty promises, and failed commitments!

I’ve been fielding several phone calls from our supporters of the 2021 fundraiser t-shirts that were supposed to be delivered by June 30, 2021 and wanted to pass along the latest information that I have.

In short, after speaking to them this morning, they have not yet shipped our shirts and cannot guarantee that we will have them in time for the reunion. One of you that I spoke with this morning said you requested your order be delivered to your home and that you are leaving on Friday which to me, means your shirts need to arrive by Thursday evening (2 days from now). I suppose worst case is they deliver them with the rest of the bulk shipment and refund your shipping.

I requested to speak with a member of their management team and was told they will ask, but cannot guarantee, that I will get a call back. I let her know I that I need to hear from a member of their management team by close of business today to see if we can get a resolution to Custom Ink’s lack of regard for commitments.

This is the 3rd time I’ve used Custom Ink for their services and EVERY time there was some issue keeping the process from running smoothly. I wrote something earlier about their process. Once this ordeal has been resolved, I’d like to post a timeline with the sequence of events, in detail, that got us to the finish line… might make for an interesting read.

In conclusion, I’m doing everything I can to get the shirts in time but it seems that our shirts are being held hostage and it is out of my control and in the hands of the worst company that I’ve ever had to work with… Custom Ink.

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July 7 update…

9:00 A.M.:

The last few times I spoke with Custom Stink, they confirmed our event date of July 11. This was the conversation yesterday:

THEM: Oh, I see your event is on the 11TH
ME: Yes, that is correct
THEM: Oh, don’t worry, I’ll do everything I can to get them to you by then
ME: Some have them shipped to their house
THEM: I can’t say if they’ll get theirs in time
ME: Then bulk ship them all to me and refund everybody’s shipping
THEM: That’s a good idea, we can do that

I received a text message this morning from UPS with a tracking number for our shirts. They are scheduled to be delivered to my front door in Ohio on JULY 12 between 1:00 – 5:00!!

Custom Ink, if you have the date and you’re shipping today, why the the ever-loving f**k would you not ship them 2-day or overnight? You haven’t screwed us over hard enough yet? Oh, and I still haven’t heard back from your management team!

UPS can handle an address change…

I called and spoke with someone at Custom Ink already this morning to see if they can change the shipping speed or change the address to have them delivered directly to Caboose. I know UPS can handle an address change so if they have shipped already, I’ll will need to spend a few bucks with UPS to change the delivery address.

The other thing the guy mentioned is that some of the non-bulk orders are not being delivered until the middle of next week. Again, I’m hoping the packages are still on the dock and they can bulk ship everything so we get them in time. The last thing he said was that he will call me back as soon as he can find out what they can do with the shipment and have someone from their management team follow up with me.

1:00 P.M.:

With no callback yet, I called them. Spoke with a gal that said the guy I spoke with this morning passed it off to a lead. The leads are trying to figure out a solution and that they’ll call me back. I asked her when I should expect the call, to which she answered “maybe today or tomorrow morning”.

I lost it and told her (yelled actually) not good enough. I’ve been promised callbacks for weeks and NOBODY calls back! Again, like everybody else did, she said she WILL have them call me back by COB today.

4:00 P.M.:

I received a call from a member of Custom Ink’s management team. The solution she came up with was to create a new rush order for our shirts and have them all bulk shipped to Caboose Farm. The delivery date is scheduled for 2 days from now on Friday July 9.

Additionally, the shirts that have already shipped to my house in Ohio, scheduled to be delivered Monday July 12, is also ours to keep. I logged into my UPS account and paid $37 to have the shipping address changed to Caboose Farm which should arrive while we are there. It was cheaper for me to do this than to ship them to everybody when I return home after the reunion.

Conclusion

What was supposed to be an easy process turned out to be a stressful, time consuming endeavor. My timeline had a built in buffer of 2 weeks for any contingencies and they managed to spend 2 weeks +1 day. I will not allow Custom Ink to manage another fundraiser campaign for The Magnificent Bastards again!