I have a company that I have proofread most of the publications I produce. They are based just south of Toronto. I have been using them for two years and up until about a two months ago, they were outstanding. I would complete a project, export it as a PDF, upload it on their website, pay with my VISA and the next morning I get get back the PDF with corrections highlighted in pink. I make the corrections and I go to press. It was a great system.
But two months ago they sent me back a document with mistakes still in place. After two years of using them with no known problems, I went to press with those mistakes and it cost me a customer. Others were more forgiving.
Last Friday I uploaded my monthly newsletter and was expecting to have it back this morning. The first strange thing that happened was that I got an e-mail saying the project was ready in about an hour. Usually it takes 24 hours but I figured, what the heck, maybe business was slow that day. So I downloaded the file but couldn't see any corrections. I e-mailed asking them for a new one. They said it was my problem and I should look again but they still redownloaded the file for me. Again, nothing. I e-mailed them again and asked them to redownload it for me before Monday (this morning).
This morning, there was a new copy to download but when I opened it, nothing. Then I zoomed in closer and sure enough there were some edits. They were so tiny it was almost impossible to see them except when enlarged to about 250%. That was ridiculous. I was sure I would miss something. But I had a deadline today so I decided to go ahead and work with what they had sent.
But once I got into the actual edits I had a problem. I have parts of the newsletter that I reuse on a yearly basis with minor changes. For instance there is a monthly calendar of reminders. They really don't change that much from year to year and the format NEVER changes. Well, this editor said that the way I had been doing it was wrong. Wrong grammatically, wrong punctuation-wise. Wrong.
So who was right? The editor that told me to change everything this month or the editor that has been doing my stuff for the last two years? This was ridiculous. So I e-mailed them again (they have no phone number) and about two hours later I got back a file that was done by my regular editor, the regular way.
So, the company came through, finally. But my question is this, isn't grammar always right or wrong? I thought it was like math. 2 + 2=4, right? How can one editor say one thing and another something else?
And how can a business change the basic format of their work. That would like me publishing me my newsletter in Spanish next month. You could still read it but you would have do some really hard work to do it.
So that's my first rant. Did I decide to dump the company (www.scribendi.com)? Nope, I will give them another chance. Mainly because finding them originally was a real pain and I really don't want to go through that again. But I will be more vigilant and plan my publications with time to get things redone.
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