Custom Ink reviews

2.9

30% would recommend to a friend

(703 total reviews)
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David Doctorow

23% approve of CEO

23% positive business outlook

Custom Ink has an employee rating of 2.9 out of 5 stars, based on 703 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an average working experience there. The Custom Ink employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Retail & Wholesale industry (3.4 stars).

Reviews by job title

703 reviews
1.0
Jun 19, 2015

Not as Advertised

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Health insurance benefits are outstanding for employees, but not for family members Catered lunch on Thursdays and lots of snack options Free tickets to local pro sports games Beautiful office space Convenient location

Cons

1. If you're a cheerleader or sorority/fraternity type, this company is for you. If you're not, you'll be ostracized for it. 2. Catered lunches, free snacks, colorful office decor, and low value busy season prizes that only 1 or 2 people are awarded every 6 months is meant to improve moral, but it's not enough to make up for the amount of stress we endure doing the work on a daily basis. It's all just meant to distract you from the monotonous and repetitive work. It's basically a factory job, but you have a chair and desk. 3. Pay is low for the area and it can be hard to make ends meet unless you live with your parents, as many employees do, or three roommates. 4. We get 25 personal time off days, but factor all the mandatory overtime days and hours required and only having 4 paid holidays, it's not as sweet a deal as leadership would have you believe. 5. It's a call center, plain and simple. A job in the order operations department, i.e. sales, satisfaction assurance, and logistics, is only good if you're happy with only being qualified for call center jobs for the rest of your life. 6. The employees skews very young and it feels like it, not in a good way. The employees are very cliquey and the atmosphere often feels more like a high school than a professional office. 7. Most internal job opportunities are lateral.

2.0
Sep 15, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Customink has an unrivaled benefits package. The facilities are very nice and well maintained. Every week the company provides a free lunch for everyone, and there are a myriad of little perks that the Team Development department organizes.

Cons

The pay is not very good to begin with considering the specificity of the job position, and there are no time-based raises or cost of living adjustments. Upward mobility is not very good, and positions to which an order operations employee can aspire are becoming fewer and farther between. Becoming a "Lead" or an "AM" is not terribly difficult, but does not result in a significant change in compensation. The pay gained from the Lead promotion is the same as the differential from working a regular weekend shift. Advancement past AM is unlikely. Customink seems oriented toward cultivating a "dazzling" atmosphere and creating pod people, if anyone is familiar with management terminology. Through internal branding and small perks, the company is able to pay less across the board by creating employees with a rabid loyalty; employees who often have never held any other position. Company Surveys are taken fairly often for employees to leave feedback about Customink processes, but these surveys are NOT confidential, and you will be interrogated about every answer. If no successful argument can be made against your criticism, the idea will be "looked at" indefinitely. Pay for order ops employees is set up like a digital factory. Your base pay is barely enough to survive, and the performance based pay you recieve on top of that depends on two factors: "Productivity" - the quantity of orders you can complete daily, and "Quality of Work" - the number of "MODs" recorded on you. The MOD system is basically a big game of tattle. It is a requirement of your job that you "record feedback" whenever you see a mistake in an order, thereby slowing your own productivity and taking money from the pocket of a fellow employee. This of course breeds resentment and irritation in the workplace, which is swept under the rug like everything else. Order Ops employees are "offered" the "opportunity" to undergo interdepartmental training. While this generally is a good thing to understand the processes of neighboring departments, it leads to a very undesirable side-effect: Customink then assigns people on a day-to-day basis to do work in other departments according to where the bulk of orders are in the assembly line. In this way, they are able to keep a fluid workforce and hire fewer employees to do more work. This is most evident in the two annual "busy seasons". Customink will brag about the 25 days per year of vacation, which is indeed wonderful, except you can only take this vacation during "off-season". The result is that all 1000-ish employees clamor to use up their time off (since only 5 days roll over) which causes a backup in the assembly line. Then the company assigns MANDATORY overtime. Undoubtedly someone from upper management will be along shortly to provide counter-examples, and they might even be true. But if you are considering a position here, I would urge you to keep an open mind and look past the initial "WOW factor" of the free snacks and the million dollar patio. Keep an eye on the way you're being treated and the way others are being treated, and decide if that seems right to you.

2.0
Mar 11, 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Co-workers are hardworking and it is a team environment, less competitive and more about helping each other and the store succeed

Cons

My first month working there, the CEO laid off hundreds of employees in production, and from there the company went down-hill. The screen printers were stretched so thin, there were mistakes or delays on every single order. Anyone with a deadline was screwed over because something in their order would go wrong. Whether it was incorrect sizing, the designs being off-center, ink stains on the clothes, or the wrong print method being used. As a sales representative, even if me and my team on the floor did everything right, because of the production team being so overwhelmed something would always go wrong, and that is how you lose customers. It was frustrating to hear corporate say they couldn't have seen laying off so many people going this badly. We all could see how this would go. Also KAM and NAM sellers were often absent throughout the work week leading us to take over their sales but not see that same commission.

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Custom Ink Response
2y
Thank you for sharing your perspective with us; it's crucial for our improvement process. We're aware that, even with our attempt to alleviate the situation through substantive severance and extended benefits for those affected, this has been a trying time. Your feedback is taken to heart, and we will make sure it reaches our team for consideration. For any additional insights you wish to provide, our door is always open for direct communication at inkerfeedback@customink.com.
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Glassdoor has 732 Custom Ink reviews submitted anonymously by Custom Ink employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Custom Ink is right for you.