Proof! Evidence Of Incompetence Forces Publishers To Eat Costs

I am ordering more business cards for my office, and am asking the graphic designer to add our email address to the cards. Our email address has an unusual spelling, so I go through it letter by letter, and she says she will send me a proof to approve before actually printing the cards. A week later, she calls and says she’s going to drop by with the cards, and to have payment ready. I never received a proof.

Lo and behold, the email address is spelled wrong, although not in the way that most people misspell it. I refuse the incorrect cards, but she insists that someone from my office signed off on the proof. As only the business owner and I have the authority to do so, and neither of us did, I know that’s not true. Additionally, the “sent” mailbox in our email contains no correspondence with her, as it would have if anyone had approved an emailed proof.

Later, she calls saying that she checked her notes from when I called to make the order, and her notes have our email address the way she spelled it. She claims that I spelled it that way on the phone, and I point out that it’s far more likely that she wrote it down wrong, and that’s why we send a proof for approval before printing, isn’t it?

All I can conclude is that she forgot to send the proof before printing and was trying to find reasons that she could claim it was my fault so she wouldn’t have to eat the cost. Now I have to wait for the proof to actually arrive so I can double-check it before the corrected cards are printed.