"I have a great horror story for you. A company went cheap on some USB flash drives. They bought some cheap factory rejects where one of the memory clusters failed. So, instead of a 512 MB, it was a 448 MB flash drive. Well, a customer notified them that the drives would heat up after extended use, so hot that it actually was melting the impression of their company logo. They had to get all the drives back from the few clients they gave them out to. They didn't overheat to the point of starting a fire, but it was hot enough to smoke a little and produce a burning electronic smell."
Here's a case where more attention to quality up front would have saved both money AND reputation in the long run.! -- EMP
Horror Story # 2: Submitted by Jessica Mathias, Ameriprise Financial Services
"I was given a pen from a charity event that I attended and was especially interested in it because it had both a pen and highlighter. I began using it right away and after a half hour of work I noticed that there were black "crumbs" all over my paper and I looked at the pen. (See photo on main page) The decal on the pen was peeling off and leaving a mess on my paper and on my hands. I knew right away what Rick was talking about when he [talked about] "cheap crap online."
Some manufacturers don't match the right type of ink with the specific plastic surface being imprinted. The result is an imprint that degrades quickly --- as does the image of the company who gave it out. -- EMP

Horror Story # 3: Contributed by our neighbor (anonymous)
We enjoyed some wine with our nieghbors the other day who used these rejected plastic tumblers. They explained that "we got these from the company that had to re-run the entire job because the otherwise beautiful artwork was imprinted upside down," None were officially distributed, however, but the error was caught AFTER printing, not before.
It's good the client was able to have the job redone before thousands and thousands were sent out. But a little closer proofreading would have saved a lot of money, time and considerable hassle.