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…