Pearl: InkJet Decal for porcelain – the rip off of the century

I got the idea from looking at a electronics catalog of Pearl, an electronics retailer here in Germany. From their catalog it all seemed so easy, you print the graphic on special inkjet paper and then use a decal foil to transfer the graphic to the mug (ceramic), wait a night and then put it in the oven. All sounded simple… but with Pearl it sure wasn’t.

The first warning sign should have been when I opened the box and the special inkjet paper was just tossed in without protection, the mugs were dusty. Oh, why can’t I just recognize such signs and act upon them.

But I still trusted that what it would work. I printed off my graphic and this is when I knew I was in trouble. The paper, which according to Pearl could be printed at 5760dpi was unable to accept the standard quality of my print out, it looked horrible. I printed another sheet at a lower quality setting and still it looked rather “horrid”.

Yet I went through the motions of making it work, I cut out one graphic, and ironed it onto the decal foil. From there I let the whole thing cool, peeled off the back and then put everything in water. I transferred the whole thing to my sample mug and it looked terrible.

This was mostly about quality, the quality was so bad that I can’t believe anyone being happy with it. Needless to say, the result was totally horrible, so bad indeed that I spared the energy of putting it in the oven.

Now why am I telling you? Mostly because of their customer service. I decided to send them an eMail to complain about the rubbish product they had sold me, I enclosed all the details and got a message back, with someone asking me to provide the order number, product code, etc.. All details I had provided in my original eMail. So I responded providing the information, I got another eMail back telling me I could return, if I hadn’t used and they’d send me a return postage sticker.

Let me just tell every company out there. There are two rules to customer services:

1) Read the eMails your customers send you
2) Even if you can’t do anything good for them, at least don’t send them useless form eMail, just tell them 😉

So my lesson – I won’t buy from Pearl again. And if you live in Germany, Austria or Switzerland, well give it a good thought before you order from them, what you might get might be a far cry from what you expected to get…