Problem I just fired Nurre Caxton!

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PicturedFramer

PicturedFramer

MGF, Master Grumble Framer
Joined
Apr 23, 2008
Posts
762
Loc
Seattle
The reason I fired NC is because they have (as I have experienced) very unattentive customer service. I've called many times to the sales rep and regional rep, since the show in Vegas to get the samples that go with display board. It cost $59.00. All I get is the runaround and no-one taking an interest to call me back. When I ask the CSR person to just send me the samples they tell me it's not their job. People that know me find me fairly mellow and patient. However I've reached my end of patience with poor customer service. I'm only trying to sell their stuff and perhaps help ourselves out. Now I'm just a little guy with a small shop and probably not worth their time of day, yet I feel that they really don't care what happens.What if I really order a moulding from them? I've never done business with NC so I have no history. So all their stuff from my walls just went in the dumpster. I figure I can do better. What follows is a n earlier posting:

I bought an EcoCare display board at the show in LV, and just received it in bubble wrap and it was broken in the corner. It didn't come with the samples though. I'm still waiting for them to show up. I was supposed to get the Sherwood and Blackwood samples with it but they were not in the box? I just started carrying and displaying NC mouldings and hope they sell well. I've spent alot of time preparing a couple of small walls for the display board and the model frame samples. Calling it my "going green" walls. I'm putting a sign on the window and hope to lure the green crowd.
The other stuff I have for greening is Pictured Woods and Bonazawood (sustainable and recycled) and all the real wood like walnut and cherry, etc. I'm not sure people really care enough but we have to go with what is prudent. I know I care and try to recycle and buy local as much as I can.

Is it me? Fire away...Just wanted to grumble......
PF
 
wow, sounds like you're at your wits end. I just now (a minute after your post) logged onto TheG to make a compliment about Nurre, who's rep just left my store moments ago.

well, all I can say is that Nurre has given me the best service of any company. :)

I'm sure there will be a number of opinions to follow...
 
I'm still grieving the "job elimination" of our excellent NC rep, Ray Miles. I'm not sure how they plan on showing me their new stuff now, as Ray was always my introduction to their products. I think they may have made a dumb move with that one!!
 
My rep up here is my ex Studio rep, and I can't say enough good about her.

After waiting months for the "design easel" from bainbridge why are you complaining about weeks for corner samples?
 
I have a small time wood worker that makes great Moulding. He uses local woods and waterbased stains. I beleive Vermont Hardwood (is it true Dave) uses local woods and water based stains. Contact them and get in some great lines.
 
We've never had a problem with NC. We don't have a rep anymore tho. Guess they don't have one assigned to our area anymore. But they send us updates by printed material, and we've not had any problems with their customer service.

Sorry you had this experience, because they have really nice mouldings. We sell the carp out of their Palladio line.
 
Bob
Design easel? You mean display board? I got that only after I called many times about it's arrival date. Finally someone gave me a tracking number for UPS. It hadn't been shipped out yet. My feeling was that no one knew anything about the order till I called. The samples from the show were here a week later, but not the ones for the display board-still waiting in the meantime I'm using it to display Bonanzawood and Natural woods from LJ, Studio and Pictured Woods and Framers Inventory.
I never met Ray Miles but from what I have heard of him he seems to have been a great sales rep. Times are tough I guess, down scaling and all. Even if I get the samples I won't need them anymore, other good stuff out there will be so much better.
PF
 
There has been a couple of times I've wanted to get rid of NC all together. I've had some major Issues with their accounts department...one time I must have misplaced an invoice (my fault) so they called me once it was delinquent for payment, I apologized and sent in a check, two weeks later they called again saying I still had not paid, so I just said, I’ll pay by credit card so we can get this taken care of without any more hassle. I had a credit rep call once a week for the next three weeks, each time repeating the same conversation, each time I gave them my credit card # and told them to take care of the balance. Finally on the fourth call for the same invoice I told them “Look I’m going to give you my cc# if you choose not to run it, that’s your problem, but if I get one more call about this invoice I’m dropping NC” amazingly they finally did it right.

I’ve also had 3 instances where mouldings were promised by a certain date for RUSH ORDERS and each time they failed to even send out the mouldings until the date they were supposed to arrive.

Every time I call to complain about one of these problems, the customer service rep asks, “who did you speak to?” (sorry, but I don’t write down the names of everyone I talk to every time I place an order) When I say I don’t remember, they always say, “well than I don’t know what I can do about it” There seems to be no sense of responsibility among their customer service dept.

Any way, enough venting for me

(after all that, why do I still use NC you ask, because I sell a ton of their moulding and my designers love them) – so what do you do.
:icon45:
 
PicturedFramer,

As AnnaLuna said, The Pacific Northwest NC/Bainbridge/Nielsen rep position was a casualty of downsizing just after the first of this year, so that is one thing that is compounding your issue. Ray provided good service but sometimes was hamstrung by deficiencies of other teammembers. There's a good likelihood that a significant portion of the NC samples will be replaced by others.

I think that is a sign of things to come with other NC/Bainbridge/Nielsen reps around the country.
 
Our rep, Judi, is the greatest! And we very seldom get moulding that has to be returned... which is a big issue with me. Can't say I feel one way or the other about their general in-house customer service, ho-hum,... but I do like their product.

One thing to consider is that the board some of you have ordered probably comes from a contracted third party, and not directly from Nurre. Just a thought.

I did hear that they were backlogged on their new black EcoCare samples. Just got mine today, directly from our rep.... THANKS JUDI!
 
I still love Nurre Caxton, but they're definitely going through a sea
change. They've gone from having fewer reps trying to handle what
more used to do, to getting rid of some of those reps and trying
to spread the work even thinner. They've always been a great
company, but if they want to keep the customers who've loved
them so much all these years, they're going to maintain that
level of quality. Giving people the runaround and understaffing
wouldn't be a wise move to make at this point.

I hope to goodness someone has both the moxie and skill to keep
NC the standout company that it's always been. It's worth making
the effort to provide good customer service. To me, even if a
company isn't able to send out a rep regularly, if they provide
good support, that matters a great deal. A case in point would
be that I never got to meet Ray, but I'm really missing him.
He was a good rep., and did his best to help his customers.
Whether or not a company can send a real person through our
door, the least they can do is provide the support we need
in a timely way.
 
Nevermind Randy, I found the pic of your NC rep. They seem to keep getting younger and younger. Don't they?

31589.jpg
 
PF, this is way off topic I know; I noticed on your website that you do wide format printing. You ask for files 300ppi. For inkjet printing, 180ppi can make a very good print. The 300ppi issue is a hold over from the days of offset lithography when line screens were fixed, usually 500lpi for a good reproduction. Because inkjet printers use way more sophisticated dithering they can get get by with less resolution. Also PDF and EPS files don't have any inherent resolution; they are vector files and can be any size at any resolution. You set the resolution when you rip 'em. We've printed plenty of images at 180ppi and they look great. I think Epson printers use 600ppi to print and the real issue is where the interpolation is done, the printer driver or PhotoShop or a in a rip. There are a lot of advocates for Qimage's interpolation algorithm. Qimage is a great printing program and an inexpensive one.
 
I've had some problems with photoshops interpolation. THat Qimage is very cheap. What's funny is that I had been looking for some rip software and its crazy expensive. I've not found any I thought I needed for the price they were asking. Qimage is a great deal if its the real deal. I'd like to know more of what you think about it Warren.

It looks like there is a demo. I may do some testing.
 
Wow what a Franken Thread...


I was reading last week on Epson's site that all the professional series printers print in multiples of 360. It doesn't matter the dpi of the file, it will print at 180, 360, 720, or 1440 pending which selection you make in the driver.

The driver must interpolate any file not in a multiple of 360. If you send a print job at 300 and choose speed, it will knock the image down to 180 and print both left and right movement of the print head.

If you choose max quality, it will jack the dpi up and print one way only, giving the ink extra time to dry before the next layer is sprayed.

No matter what setting you choose, the printer will print the job faster if you send the job in multiples of 360.

I timed my 9880 printing the same image. I sent one at 300 dpi and again at 360. The 360 dpi started printing faster.
 
Figures. I was so locked into 300 and had all my customers trained as well! Back to the drawing board.
 
Hey, you guys wanna get a room, or what?
;) Rick

P.S. NC is one of my favorite vendors. Our rep is great. Hi, Linda.
 
Epson stuff

Thanks for checking out my website, it's so hokey. But it's clean and I have made other versions completely revamped. I just haven't had the time to launch them. The one up is just a photshop jpg of each page. No keywords or tags to flag. As for the page with the free Epson print goes, it's been a loss leader - don't get many people interested enough. I've been in the printing and graphics for so long I guess the old school is showing. It doesn't matter to me about the dpi 300 or whatever. Just as long as I can blow the thing up and it doesn't start to pixelize. I ask for 300+ because at that point it should be a fairly large file with plenty of info. I used to do signs and an eps is what the program really likes for vector files. The rip program I use is Postershop6.5 by Onyx. It was very expensive but good and fast ripping.
These days I get people who want more canvas printing with gallery wrap than any other jobs on the Epson. I just have the smaller 24" Stylus Pro in the shop, but I have access to a larger 44" Epson if I need it. Not very often though. I'm looking to buy a larger model sometime when all this crappy economy gets better.
PF
 
Jay, Qimage is the real thing and you're right, it's cheap. Get the studio version it's got a better layout function; it's full page editor has rullers, a big help id deciding what size a page will be printing from rolls. Qimage is a big help to me because I have to use RGB profiles (because my very expensive rip, PosterPrint, can't limit inks properly for a 7 color printer). My soware will make 7 color CMYK profiles (how can they be 7 color proflies if they're called CMYK?). So far, RGB profiles have proven easier to make. I have a RGB rip, ImagePrint, but it's layout functions for someone printing one image per page is more complicated than Qimage and i think they want something like $1,000 to update. The biggest mistake I've made so far in digital imaging was buying those two rips. The next to the biggest mistake was getting the postscript versions of each. PhotoShop will rip and vector file as well. We live and learn.

Qimage is (at least it was for me) to get into but once I got it configured the way I liked it's been a pure pleasure. Once you buy it, you get all the upgrades free.

Jerry, That's pretty much myth about multiples of 180ppi. Some of the early drivers may have worked slightly faster. Epson printers print a 720 ppi (my Canon iPF9000 prints at 600ppi). You could take your file and make it conform to the 180 ratio but you'd simply be interpolating in photoshop rather than in the driver. It all depends on where you want to do the interpolation, PhotoShop or the driver or, in my case, Qimage. Google the Qimage Challange and take the challange and I think you'll be convinced Qimage's interpolation is better.

Jay, Qimage is designed for photographers; with some effort you'll love it.
 
Ray Miles wasn't as cute as the little fore mentioned and displayed reppie-poo... but he was knowledgeable, upbeat, and always a friend. He will be greatly missed if he doesn't find an other rep job for the area.
 
I am about there too

I had a problem with them too. I called my rep, Kurt, I believe. I met him once, when I first bought the business 3 months ago and he was really really nice and very upbeat. I liked him. then I got a call back from him within a few hours, which I expected, and he told me he was let go. I didn't read all the posts in this thread, so if someone else mentioned it, sorry, but he was, in my opinion, a great rep.
Since, I called, left messages, called again, left messages...after days and days, I get a call back and my question was answered as short as possible with a really quick hang up, I got the feeling I was holding his day up. I don't remember who it was, but man, not happy with them. Hopefully their new rep will come by to introduce himself/herself, but unlikely as I couldn't even get a straight answer out of them as to who was my rep. I am redmodeling my shop and considering dropping them. We'll see, more posts like this and my mind will be easly made up.
 
Bob Doyle said:
I beleive Vermont Hardwood (is it true Dave) uses local woods and water based stains.
Click to expand...

Bob,

With the exception of Mahogany, all our woods are from the northeastern US. All the staining and lacquer finishes are water-based, but we do also offer a handrubbed oil & wax finish. The oil & wax finish, while it does contain some VOCs, had the advantage of near 100% transfer efficiency because it's wiped on as opposed to sprayed so there are relatively few VOCs produced.

Thanks for asking,
 
Promote it as a selling point. You have great moulding, and with the green push and sustainability being important to consumers we need to promote every advantage we can.
 
One little thing you all forgot to mention about Qimage is that it is only Windows based. You would have to run virtual PC or something like that to run it on a Mac.
 
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