Bad, Shrinking Avery A-8, A8, A-9, A9 Vinyl, - Avery Vinyl Distributors, Suppliers, Reviews, Problems Photos, Pictures, Examples, Warranty Info Lawsuit?
Don't Get Burned By
BAD AVERY VINYL!

***Mobile Customs has moved!***
Mobile Customs - Signs & Graphics
8155 Claymore Avenue
Inver Grove Heights, MN 55076
Phone: 651-307-0841

This Domain name - www.avery-vinyl.com - is for sale.

*** Update 2-28-08 ***
Claims form has been added. Fill this out and mail it to Avery at the address on the form.

Click Here for Bad Avery Warranty Claims Form
(warning - they like to low-ball your hourly shop rates)

The person I have dealt with directly at Avery is, and gotten some results:
(Albeit very slow and reluctant results)

Paul P. Roba
Technical Services Manager
Avery Dennison Inc. - GRPD
250 Chester Street, 6-T
Painesville, OH 44077
office - 440.358.3966
fax - 440.358.3649

I've received many more stories and photos and will be adding them to this site as soon as I can. Also several inquiries about organizing a class-action suit. My problems are dwarfed by some of the stories I have heard involving very large quantities of vehicles with FAILING AVERY VINYL on them.

If you feel this site has helped and would like to help me with the maintenance, please feel free to make a contribution.
(any amount is GREATLY appreciated!)

I believe Avery also sells their vinyl under the names FDC and Universal. I do not know for certain that it is the same stock but my guess would be that it is, so do your homework before choosing a vinyl supplier.

Please send me photos of your FAILING AVERY VINYL JOBS and I will post them here. Be sure to include info about the job, like how old is it, what climate it is from and what Avery did (didn't do) to resolve the situation.
YOUR REPUTATION IS ON THE LINE
***AND THAT'S EVERYTHING IN THE SIGN INDUSTRY ***

The photos below show a premium example of why NOT to use Avery vinyl for your graphics or lettering jobs. The colors I used were "Vibrant Green" and "Bright Orange" A8 Opaque. At the time these photos were taken this vinyl had only been on this trailer for a year at most. Also, this is in Minnesota so it was NOT exposed to any harsh Southern Sunlight.

Furthermore, the vinyl I used on this job was ordered and drop-shipped to my shop directly from Avery so they can't say it was old vinyl that had been on my distributor's shelf or that it was expired. I feel my local dealer tried to do what he could but that the ball was dropped at the Avery Corporate level. Unfortunately, I had to change local dealers when I moved away from using Avery, although I have to say my new supplier of 3M Gerber vinyls, N. Glantz & Sons, is by far the best dealer in town with awesome customer service!

After MONTHS of essentially being put on the back burner and my customer being tired of feeling like he was being blown off, Avery gave me a 50 yard roll of Black A8 which was supposed to compensate me and my customer for the horrible way his trailer looked! Just what I wanted....MORE bad vinyl. ?? The customer just asked if I could try to cover up the big parts of the green with some better vinyl (3M) so he could at least live with it. I did that but I know there's no possible way it can last and I told him that too. He could have easily (and may still) sue me! The orange vinyl seemed to hold up pretty good but as you can see from the photos, the Vibrant Green quickly deteriorated SO badly that it looked as though it had been through a fire!!! The adhesive on the vinyl actually ate through the paint on the trailer all the way down to the bare aluminum. The vinyl cracked and dried out so badly that when you tried to peel it off it just cracked apart and turned to dust AND took ALL of the factory paint off the trailer with it! I have never seen anything like this in my life. Please read the paragraph after the photos at the bottom of this page....Please let me know if there are others who had similar problems!


The adhesive somehow broke down and actually ate into the factory painton the trailer. The black you see
is the trailer paint migrating through the adhesive and into the vinyl. Note that this did not happen to the orange
and they are both Avery A8, drop-shipped from the factory. So they can't say that this trailer had bad paint
on it, otherwise the same would have happened under the orange vinyl.


As far as I'm concerned, Avery should have never even hesitated to take full responsibility for this and pay to have this guy's trailer resided and also pay for new graphics. This guy was a good customer of mine and all I could tell him was that I was working on resolving the issue as best as I could but that Avery seemed to be intentionally dragging their feet to try and get this to just go away. I would still like to see Avery try to make this right with my customer by giving him some new siding on his trailer and paying me to do the graphics again. How can I give my customers a good guarantee when the vinyl manufacturer won't stand behind their product??? That's just a piss-poor way of doing business, as far as I'm concerned and unless Avery decides to step up to the plate and make this right so I can reclaim my good reputation with this customer, I will continue to maintain this webpage and optimize it for the search engines as well as posting it on Sign shop Forums so that I can hopefully help other sign shops keep from getting burned by Avery the way myself and my customer did. Up until this point I had used allot of Avery so I'm obviously concerned for my other customers. I'm now using 3M vinyl almost exclusively. It's tried and true and their customer support blows Avery's away!

I would not even CONSIDER trying the new Avery A9 until they can prove that they will stand behind their product by making this right! In a business like Signs & Graphics where word of mouth is EVERYTHING you can't afford to have even one of these customers running around town with a trailer looking like this and you would think Avery would feel the same way but apparently they don't really care and that right there should be all you need to make your decision whether or not to use their products!

On the other hand, If Avery WERE to make this right, and I mean TRULY right, I would be just as willing to give their new A9 line a try and if it turned out to be a good product with a new customer support attitude I would be be happy to encourage others to give them a new shot too....

Update: 11-20-06. I continue to get new reports from people who are using Avery's "new" A9 and having the same bad results as with the A8.

Update: 1-23-07 I've received yet more photos from other sign shops of failing Avery graphics jobs. I spoke with an Avery Executive at the beginning of December who wanted to know more about my particular situation. He promised to get back to me very soon and now it's been another 7 weeks or so of time that has passed. I have gotten no call back or even any calls returned from messages I left.

 

-Doug Greenhaw / Mobile Customs - Signs & Graphics

Scroll Down For More Examples From Other Sign Shops Around The Country

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This job was just 3 months old....Avery A9

Look at the corners of the sign below to see how much the Black Avery A8 vinyl shrunk! Yea, this is great stuff! -No Thanks, I'll stick with 3M Gerber
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Click Here To See More Photos Of Bad Avery Vinyl

Here are some posts from other people who have also had problems. These quotes are from several different Sign Forums.

By Chris McMullen 2/10/2005 12:20:38 PM

I represent a sign and graphics company in Jacksonville, Florida who has experienced this same failure of the Avery A8 vinyl. He has been unable to get anyone at Avery to respond and as a result has been forced to retain our services. Any information you may have about this situation would be appreciated and I would be happy to answer any questions you may have as well. Thank you.
Lindell Farson & Pincket, P.A. Jacksonville, FL (904) 880-4000
__________________________________________________________________

Posted on Lawnsite.com
Date: January 23rd, 2007 12:53PM
I am having a problem with my 2 year old vinyl. The sign girl put on the high performance Avery vinyl and it is already starting to peel. I am making her buy 3M on the new truck. I am convinced all the old trucks will have to be re-lettered within 3 years. I had my first truck lettered with 3M vinyl 3 years ago and it is still in mint condition.
Avery has a lot mad customers: http://www.mobilecustoms.com/avery/
I will never let my sign girl put Avery vinyl on any of my trucks again.

Later,
DFW Area Landscaper

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Vinyl shrinking on vehicle
Posted by: Scott (---.prtmry01.nj.comcast.net)
Date: October 30, 2005 05:22PM
I have a customer that I used Avery A8 vinyl on his vehicle this past winter. He brought it back to me yesterday becouse the vinyl is shrinking and wrinkling. It shows up the worst on areas that are vinyl on vinyl. He is a clean freak and uses regular dishwashing detergent and a kind of jet dry to clean his vehicles. He then uses maguires wax and polish. any ideas why this is happening?
__________________________________________________________________

Re: Vinyl shrinking on vehicle
Posted by: Travis (---.proxy.aol.com)
Date: October 30, 2005 09:27PM
Everyone in the industry should know by now that Avery had some bad issues with the cast vinyl shrinking. Mainly over the summer is when it was happening to us. They claimed an adhesive mixture mess up. Fat chance to recieve a fair claim against warranty. Avery has basically sh*t on everyone that I know of that has tried to make a claim. My suggestion is to change manufacturers.
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Re: Vinyl shrinking on vehicle
Posted by: Rick (71.244.98.---)
Date: November 02, 2005 06:02PM
Had that on several expensive jobs. Took lots of photos, and submitted to the distributor. Avery 'gave' me replacement rolls of the vinyl that failed, and guess what? It happened yet again, with the same vinyl. Guess who's out a customer?

Rick
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Re: Vinyl shrinking on vehicle
Posted by: Iceworks Graphics & De-Signs (---.clvdoh.adelphia.net)
Date: November 06, 2005 06:16PM
We used Avery for the first 3 yrs of being in business, after Avery had all of the A8 high performance shinkage problems, it cost us a couple thousand dollars in labor. We had customer after customer coming back... We call Neon Engineering based out of Cinncinatti, OH. Free shipping with 150.00 order of vinyl. We swithed both of our shops over to Orical, we have never had a problem since. Oricals low end vinyl is better then Avery's A8 series. Save yourself the headachs, STICK WITH ORICAL......
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Re: Vinyl shrinking on vehicle
Posted by: Doug (---.hsd1.mn.comcast.net)
Date: January 24, 2006 01:34PM
If you want to see a prime example of why NOT to use Avery vinyl, I have detailed photos posted on the follwing link:

www.mobilecustoms.com/avery
_________________________________________________________

Travis
Joined: 22 May 2006
Posts: 23
Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2006 2:57 pm Post subject:

They didnt take care of us and many others reasonably or even at all in our case when they had their shrinking problem a while back. For that I do everything in my power not to use any of their product. However the jerks have their greedy little fingers in so many areas it is difficult to completely write them off.
________________________________________________________

signappeal
Joined: 15 May 2006
Posts: 11
Location: Fox Lake, IL
Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2006 8:09 pm Post subject: Avery

At latest count, I have replaced $28,000 in work from avery a-8 that had the shrinking problem. I will not accept thier credit for material that they offer. I just keep good track of the losses, because what goes around comes around!

_____________________________________________________

Michael Berry
Visitor
Member # 2604
posted April 03, 2006 07:19 AM

There have been several posts on Avery vinyl and the problems associated with Avery vinyl. Maybe if you bought out a supplier of this vinyl, there might be a reson he or she's dumping the brand.
Just do a search on Avery vinyl and you'll see what I mean. I am not trying to poke a hole in your sale of the vinyl, I was not sure if the vinyl you are selling is some of the "problem vinyl" that folks are talking about.

-New Hampshire
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By James Kemp 4/6/2005 5:58:39 PM

I had to quit using Avery. I had my first problem 4 years ago with a roll of black. They started in on my application method etc. I knew that was not the problem because I had 2 brands of vinyl on the job. I had problems again last year with several different colors of A8 vinyl. All together the Avery "shrinkage problem" has cost me over $4000.00 in redo's.
____________________________________________________-

By Geary Wootten 7/6/2005 12:44:10 AM

Two Vinyl Makers I've never once had a problem with.....3M and Gerber...........'nuff said. ~Gear
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By Gino 11/19/2005 11:28:59 AM

John… if your problems are with ‘Avery’, then I would do exactly as Roland says. Take pictures and go to the ‘Avery’ booth itself. Have invoices as to when you purchased product, installed it and how long it lasted. You want to see Tim Doyle or Richard Oliff. Tim considers himself the head guy on the east coast and Canada. Just ask him, he’ll tell you how important he is. I went straight for the jugular at last years’ show [2004] in Atlantic City. At their booth were he and four other representatives. They laughed at me with my obvious ‘Avery’ vinyl problems and tried to get rid of me. That just spurred me on more with their laughing. It’s not at all funny when their products are taking money right out of you and your family’s mouth. They told me repeatedly that it was application failure. I got louder and louder, until they called Security to have my butt thrown out of the show. I got louder still, and told everyone [the crowd] what was going on and had my own sort of backup, because now I was creating a scene. Security refused to do anything because I really was peaceful... just loud. They [Avery] offered to then start taking care of me. Get everything in writing. ‘Avery’ is in trouble and will eventually give you credit for material loss and about ¾ costs for labor at a fair market price. BUT, you must be strong. Don’t take no crapolla. Good Luck. If you need help, I’ll be at the show, all day Saturday. As far as the clear coats on vehicles, well I’ve mixed brands of vinyl on the same vehicle and ONLY the ‘Avery’ crap lifts. Sorry, but it is a product failure from ‘Avery’ not and substrate contamination. It will lift off banners, duraply, aluminum, etc. They don’t all have the silicone coatings. That sounds more like reps are getting you to buy more products, thus their making more profits.
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By Zeke 11/28/2005 11:39:56 AM

I filed all my Avery catalogs in the circular file 2-3 years ago. Its' too bad about the "missinformation" but why take a chance? I use 3M for vehicles and permanent signage and FDC for site signs and stuff that is not required to last. I have used oracal and had no complaints, but then I read here that others had problems so I quit using that too. I hope it gets resolved but I work a small 1-person shop and I really don't have time to re-do a lot of stuff so for the additional cost I need to be safe not sorry...zeke

Click Here To See More Photos Of Bad Avery Vinyl

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