[yster]

I'm pretty sure most of you don't really religiously dig through my start to finish thread, but I'm pretty sure most of you would like to hear about this (it's a repeat from my ASM thread):

I got the chips today! Pics will come at some point.

The first thing I noticed was that they weren’t oiled. I was told they were to be oiled, but they weren’t. Well, no problem, I can do a little manual labor… I was prepared to do it anyway.

I counted them all out, 1600, plus the bad batch of NCV Highs, plus 5 extra of each. Fantastic!

After checking out my inlay art, I went off for a supper and Frisbee golf routine. I came back home, got on the phone with the phone company for personal business, won a few pots and then lost p88 to pQQ to ky70 who spiked trips on the river to drop kick me out of the chiptalk tourney. No worries, I’ve got 1600 chips to oil!

Setting up my system as mentioned in some other post, I went through all 1600 in about 4 hours, but they’ve still got to be wiped dry.

Here’s were things go south!

After getting to chip 1540 or so, I notice that the inlays on a bunch of the $5 chips aren’t looking right. The “matting” on top of the inlay which is finished to resemble the surface of the chip is weak on many inlays, or somehow just doesn’t seem like it’s even there at all. At least one example’s inlay you can poke at and it seems like the label might pop out! I finish these up (I’m pretty OC about this kind of stuff) and check the rest. There are TONS like this. Argh! I run downstairs to check out my sample inlay horseheads. Most, if not all of my chips are not finished to the quality of these example chips. The examples have an inlay with a “matting” that is finished and the thickness of this matting looks like it’s pretty thick, giving the inlay a little depth to the view. I’m not going to gripe about the ones that are finished with a good feeling but simply don’t look “thick” enough, but read on…

To add insult to injury, because of the lousy inlay “matting” the oil, which I will reiterate was applied conservatively by wiping the rolling edges across a juiced chamois and then quickly rubbed on each face for oiling, has apparently seeped to the inlays, a bunch of which have an oily ring around the outside. This is simply not acceptable.

Well, guess who gets a phonecall tomorrow! I have full faith in the customer service of PCOL considering the price they pull down for their products. These are a luxury item to me and many of their home customers, and so far I have been treated with a fabulous level of courtesy not seen in bargain shopping experiences. I’m sure things will be set straight, and all faulty product will be replaced. My concern is time and circumstances. Will I have to pay to ship back x chips and wait another 2 months or more? My order isn’t even complete yet and I’m already going to be negotiating a return? I’ve paid a ton of cash for these and if I’m mailing them away I’m not really getting value out of my purchase, and the idea of paying for stuff I don’t reap the benefit from is my principal concern. Here’s to a peaceful solution!

[KYBill]

Keep us updated, i was thinking about placing a custom order.

[ThorCavalier]

This is a bummer to hear about. It seems like every few orders has some problem. The good news is that PCOL will fix the problem. They always come through. The bad news is that the order I placed is to be a Christmas gift so I really don't want to be scrambling to get defects fixed.

Let us know how it goes.

[viet rounder]

I hear yah, my order consisted of about 1500 chips and many were missing the matt finish. I also had many off printed (not off centered) inlays. I let this go through simply because PC had been extremely nice to me, sending me presamples of my design before sending off to mass production, and most importantly, they gave me over 100 extras. Next order, however, i will be direct with them from day one - "Please watch your quality control on these chips"

Hope things pick up for you. The customer service is still top notch

[nijer]

About a month after I had received my chips, I noticed the labels were rising off the inset part of the chip. I called pc.com and explained my problem, sent my chips back and they are in the process of remaking all the chips I sent back.

[Pavel6969]

It sucks when you wait to get a custom product, are all excited about it and when it arrives the product is defective. At least it seems like PCOL is good with this type of problem and will fix it.

But it does beg the question, why don't they check out their chips before sending them? Don't have to do one chip at a time, but at least do a spot check of one out of every 50 or so. Seems like more than one person has gotten faulty chips from them.

[yster]

The chips are indeed spot checked. It's become apparent to me that the failure rate on the custom inlay process is probably huge.

My main concern here is their threshold of what they consider to be a quality product. I assumed that the chips will have an identical finish to the samples I have. While this is the case with a lot of them, so many do not meet that criteria that I am afraid that when I send them back they'll scoff at me and tell me they're fine... particularly because these chips were signed off by hand in the first place.

But, color me paranoid (see my thread about all the worries I had from start to finish.). I remain confident that PCOL will come through.

[yster]

Originally Posted by KYBill

Keep us updated, i was thinking about placing a custom order.

I recommend their product if you have the time to wait for it; don't let this story scare you away! I find that these are worth far more than a chipco or similar full custom design.