If only we translator's also had the day off! ;o)
But in honour of today's celebrations on the theme of language, Lythan has set a wonderful dare over on the DCM blog.
You need to make a card featuring a foreign language. But which one to choose?
Well, I went for Polish in order to plan ahead for upcoming name day celebrations.
Here's my card:
Papers: My Mind's Eye
Seam binding: The Ribbon Girl
Pearl: Prima
Punch: EK Success
Felt: Papertrey Ink
Stamps: Papertrey Ink
Dies: Papertrey Ink
Other: Liquid Pearls, Stickles, Distresser, 3D foam, pattern tracer
As for the greeting, it goes a little something like this:
May the sun keep you warm, may your smile last long, may your face remain filled with joy because today it's your name day!
Well, it sounds a lot nicer in Polish, and it rhymes!
On a side note, any regular visitors to my blog will know that I am a great fan of Papertrey Ink (PTI) product.
Much as I love their products, unfortunately for a number of years I have been less thank overjoyed with a great many other aspects of the company, especially the shipping policy for international orders and well ordering in general and have seen things deteriorate to an all time low this week.
The biggest personal disappointment I experienced was back in the day when ordering 10 of the ink cubes to try them out but had added in the comments that if it was truly going to cost $30+ to ship just ten ink cubes then to cancel my order, well I got charged that $30+ dollars shipping for 10 ink cubes which arrived in a huge box nestled in lots of wrap to pad it out, thankfully no customs charge (that really would have been insult to injury!).
I got right on the e-mail to enquire why my comments hadn't been taken into consideration and was told after some delay that the comments aren't read until after an order has been processed. Full stop. It was their policy so I didn't follow up with further complaint, just sucked it up and made a note that those were the goal posts for any future transactions with PTI (needless to say it took some time before I placed another order).
In all my years of online ordering I was used to retailers having a policy where comments included with an order were read and dealt with before an order was dispatched (a rather normal assumption I thought since a comments box was provided there during ordering) and actually someone would get back in touch to follow up if there were questions attached. But obviously that wasn't the way of doing things at PTI.
Fair enough.
But to rub salt into those smarting wounds, the ink cubes I had bought were next to useless when it came to testing them on various paper and cardstock, and I have rarely used them since. What a waste of money, but more importantly a huge loss of faith PTI.
Anyway, many years have passed and I have ordered from PTI since then, only a couple of times to the UK as really you have to make a big order to make the postage "bearable", as inevitably there is a £60~ customs charge also to factor in. So where possible I have ordered when I could get stuff shipped to the villa in Florida when on hols, or another US address if someone was coming back and had space in their case (those were the days).
To cut a long story short any followers of PTI will be aware of the appalling customer service that has been shown to a huge customer of PTI. All for the sake of $20.
It has disgusted me so much that I have even found it hard to enjoy using my PTI stash this week to create something knowing how this person has been treated and in fact reading on the PTI forum how many former and current PTI customers are out there who have also been left disappointed after issues have not been resolved to their satisfaction.
And until PTI addresses the issues regarding their returns policy for defective product/supply of the wrong product (so the end customer isn't paying for their mistake), huge shipping delays, constant stock problems (had been hoping this might be resolved with the new website), lack of communicating accurate information (plenty of promises of change but nothing to show for it), and most importantly customer service that services the customer I won't be buying.
I truly hope PTI turns it around - they have some of the best product on the market and their style is one that most closely fits my tastes.
I have had a lot of people ask me about the PTI products I use and I have always raved about them (with the exception of the ink) but I have only felt it right to also tell them what to expect when wanting to order to the UK as I would feel very guilty if I had recommended a company and then that person had ended up having the same experiences as me and many other customers (frustration with out of stock items, very long turn-around on dispatch of orders, high postage, very high customs charges).
I might not be a big fish to PTI, they probably won't miss my custom, I'll probably miss their product a lot more, but it's the principle of the thing.
PTI have a few wrongs to right - both personally to the customer involved in this latest incident (an apology would be a nice way to start) and publicly by listening to their customer base and bringing the quality of their customer service and policies in line with the high standard of design and product concepts they offer.
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