JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Musician Message Forum Sire Press: Short Run CD/DVD Duplication and Screen Printing

Hey Everyone,

Just wanted to let you know little bit about Sire Press. Located in Philadelphia, we specialize in short run CD/DVD duplication with unique packaging and design. We also offer eco-friendly packaging and inks, t-shirts, stickers, business cards and more. Check us out at: http://www.sirepress.com If you have any questions, just email me: jay [at] sirepress [dot] com

Thanks,

Jay

Fair warning: my wife (Jillian Aversa, previously Jillian Goldin) had a miserable experience with this company. The print quality of the CDs was very poor, particularly the on-disc art, not at all like the high quality of printing from Discmakers, another company in the same geographical area (and one she and I have used many times, happily.) What was very frustrating was that SirePress never sent her a proof - or at least, they only sent her one AFTER they printed all the discs. Thus, when she received it and pointed out the proof was incorrect, they said they could not issue a full refund or reprint, since the discs were already manufactured. This was a really backwards way of doing things. I don't know if they still do this, but as you might imagine, it does not bode well for a pro company that you might be spending thousands of dollars with.

Jill refused the shipment of CDs when they arrived, a common practice when you know you are to receive a product that is incorrect or that you don't want. Without going into further details, it only got much, much worse from there.

In comparison, when Discmakers has made (minor) mistakes in the past, even if they are the fault of the customer, they are very apologetic, professional and have been known to even do full reprints free of charge. Go with the proven companies, IMO.

Hey Andrew,

If you don't mind I'm going to respond to your post piece by piece:

1. The reason we never sent a proof was a proof was never requested. We offer both digital and physical proofs, which must be requested from the beginning of production.

2. Jillian contacted us during production letting us know she was worried the cases would print out too dark. While this is against our policy, we offered to ship her one case (in other words a free 1-off which is normally a $75 fee) so she could decide if she wanted to either use the original artwork, or summit new artwork and pay for new cases.

3. The shipment of CDs were never "refused when they arrived". The reason for this was they were never shipped. The order was placed to be a pickup. For over a year now, we have had all the CDs in cases boxed up and ready for pick up in our shop.

4. The complaint was regarding the color of the cases, not the print quality. While we do not offer color matching, which is why we offer physical proofs (which was not requested). Even though we felt the complaint was not valid we offered a partial refund, which was refused.

5. Comparing us (short run duplication) to Discmakers (replication) is like comparing a newspaper boy to Barnes and Noble. We aren't a large facility with highly automated machines. We are a collective of musicians, artists, and creative people who believe bands should be able to get 100 QTY of any packaging, which is why we offer 30+ packaging options. We also try to be as "hands-on" as possible to keep the final product more organic, and provide jobs.

I'm sorry you were unhappy with the way things went, and we did everything we could within reason.

If anyone is interested in our company philosophy, history, pictures of our shop, and/or bands we are in, you can check it out here:

http://www.sirepress.com/aboutus.php