How do you choose a printer?

No, not the Canon variety from Currys PC World but the type that you send your design to that prints your business cards.

According to a lady whose presentation we printed yesterday; the first criteria is visibility. Do you know the printer even exists? People walk past our shop for years on end without noticing we are there. Maybe a flashy electronic programmed sign, Piccadilly Circus style might help? Others find us on the internet. Others know us from the time years back when they used us for some printing job or other.

OK, you have located a printer on Google, you now send them a message. There is no guarantee they would ever get the message. Sometimes customers sit in our shop attempting to send us a file from the phone, but it never arrives. The same lady yesterday said of the three enquiries she sent to different printers we were the first to reply and one still hadn't replied a few days later.

The next hurdle is how to choose from the ones who you have found and made contact? Social media might help. Personal experience might help too. Minuteman Stockport has a score of 4.8 in the Google reviews.

Most potential customers seem to work on price. One person yesterday said the price was 'reasonable' another abandoned the job part way through due to cost. Many potential clients seem to confuse DIY with personal service. Do you have photos to print? Yes, the Asda self-service photo booths will be cheaper. Copies? Yes, the library self-service might be cheaper too. Expect to do it yourself though. Don't expect hidden extra services such as image cropping, top quality prints, choice of paper, personal interaction, specialised advise. Even do it at home but, whilst we bear the cost of misprints and technical failure, the home user has to pull their own hair out.

When you choose a printer, one is buying into a service that the price doesn't always reflect. Cheap? That might mean late delivery. Cheap? That might mean disappointing quality. Cheap? That might mean it doesn't look as you expected.

Some customers judge on people. Often people phone us up and ask for a member of staff by name and sometimes ask for our name on the phone. Other potential customers pay us a visit to suss us out. One regular (as in once a year) customer popped in for a ‘discovery mission’ but apparently, we upset him because he went away and posted a bad review. I'm still not sure why.

All in all, a complicated process that can easily go wrong at any stage. So, how does one make a choice of printer? If you have a tight budget you can save money by doing it yourself; if you want to use a printer such as Minuteman Press Stockport, ask for guidelines before starting to design. Sending a problem file to a cheap printer and the art work will be rejected; a high street service will try and advise and make corrections. All part of the service... and included in the price.