Terribly poor quality of Vanguard CAP uniform items - anyone noticed?

[a2capt]

What I'd be curious of ... is any of this actually just NOS bookstore/CAPMart stock?

I would hope that .. well, even back then, I can't imagine someone letting the machine do that piss-poor of a job, and counting that as a job well done and calling it a day. 

[gregma]

What I'd be curious of ... is any of this actually just NOS bookstore/CAPMart stock?

I would hope that .. well, even back then, I can't imagine someone letting the machine do that piss-poor of a job, and counting that as a job well done and calling it a day. 

One thing I can be assured of, either way there is no Quality control checking before an item is checked.  Or at least very poor QA.  Heck if the problem is that they can't get any quality for only .85 each, I'd pay $1.85 each to have it presentable and wearable.  We will see what if anything is done about the issue.

Greg

[GTCommando]

I'll put my two cents in. I ordered some Civil Air Patrol tapes for encampment and HMRS. When I got them, Not only were the letters much larger than normal, but the spacing between the lettering was so uneven that the lettering was too wide to fit my BDU pocket. I had to rip the tape off of my field jacket that was sewn there almost three years ago.    With everything else that's happened recently, Vanguard has now officially gotten on my bad side. 

[jimmydeanno]

I just received a bunch of stuff for an upcoming encampment.  Our squadron handed out order forms and ordered the whole lot at the same time.

It was around 100 items from t-shirts, to wing patches, to name tapes, ribbons, etc. 

We got every single item on the order, in 1 week 2 days.  All the nametapes were high quality, the CAP tapes were as well.  The badges were very nice, and all the patches were as they should be.

[Eclipse]

What I'd be curious of ... is any of this actually just NOS bookstore/CAPMart stock?

I would hope that .. well, even back then, I can't imagine someone letting the machine do that piss-poor of a job, and counting that as a job well done and calling it a day.

It might be - in the Grand Scheme^® they probably don't sell that many of them

Here's the last Bookstore image

And the current:


Looks about the same to me.

I wouldn't put any stock in the color differences since you don't know who did what in either the .pdf or the online image, etc.
Note the lack of detail in both in the laurels, though in the images it looks like the Bookstore version might be a hair tighter in detail.
In general I wouldn't go by the photos for either one, since there are a ton of vendor, photo, and per-run variables.

I wonder if these are being farmed out in lots or run as-ordered on a consumer-grade machine?

[RiverAux]

Seems to me that CAP may have designed a badge so complex that it just can't be made to look good in the size we wear it on our uniforms. 

[Eclipse]

I would tend to agree except that I have seen some amazingly detailed, multi-colored embroidery from patch shops and have also seen
at least a few decent looking EMT patches.

No matter who makes it, that serpent is only going to be 1-2 stitches wide, so either they nail it or it's going to look bad.

Frankly, on the ones above, I'd have more issue with the laurels than the star, they are just lumps, but they've been that way on almost
all the GT insignia for a long time.

[JC004]

Seems to me that CAP may have designed a badge so complex that it just can't be made to look good in the size we wear it on our uniforms.

CAP would design something complex?  Are you saying that CAP isn't simple in its ways?!

[Chief2009]

Could the problem be that NHQ isn't providing a good enough graphic?

Or, and I feel this is more likely, NHQ isn't holding their feet to the fire, as it were.

[JC004]

Could the problem be that NHQ isn't providing a good enough graphic?

Or, and I feel this is more likely, NHQ isn't holding their feet to the fire, as it were.

I doubt that.  Any pro patch company is going to make a clean design for the production.  Ask Eclipse.

The contract management is a known issue and a lot of people discuss that regularly. 

[Al Sayre]

When I was trying to get cloth IC badges from Tom, I just sent him the line drawings from the ICL, they turned out pretty well.  Back then I couldn't get VG to even acknowledge my emails.

[JC004]

When I was trying to get cloth IC badges from Tom, I just sent him the line drawings from the ICL, they turned out pretty well.  Back then I couldn't get VG to even acknowledge my emails.

Don't even get me started about the e-mails.  At one point, I had to hunt them down IN PERSON to get MY MONEY BACK that they had, for which I had no product in exchange.

[Spaceman3750]

I have never had any problems contacting Vanguard. I call the CAP number, ask for sales, and they have answered every time. They changed an order for me earlier this week.

A couple of weeks ago I ordered about $50 worth of various insignia including embroidery and engraving. They had it to me in about a week and shipped UPS 2 day air for free. The nametapes were of high quality.

I don't know when the last time you guys have ordered is but lately they have been nothing but good to me.

[manfredvonrichthofen]

I tend to agree with most of you about the piss poor performance of VG when it comes to the quality of our embroidered badges. I am very pleased about the difference in the old ground team badges and the current ones that I have after I sent a very polite and detailed email that was answered the same way within one week. The wreath was much more detailed, the star was to a correct scale with the rest of the badge. The only issue with the badge that I have now is that the triangle in the middle of the badge was bigger than the circle it was in. I hope to have this corrected through another email of the same sort. I would suggest that you could try going through 1800nametape.com to order the EMT badge in the mean time, as it is not a CAP owned emblem, my local hospital uses the same badge for our EMTs.

In the next email I send I want to add a link to these threads about their quality so that they can see what we are needing fixed in their items, not just badges, but ribbons and rank as well. Though I would like to do this, I wouldn't feel comfortable doing so as that would pretty much be the same as saying that everyone here has issues with you, and I don't want to air everybody's laundry.

I am not at all thinking that I am a fixall, but I know I have gotten through with them before, and I would like to try again. The more people that send them a polite email ASKING, not telling, them to fix their problems, the more likely they are to fix these errors.

[gregma]

As a followup to my bad quality patches.  I got a very nicely written reply from Vanguard about my EMT patches.  They apologized and recognized the problem.  They have removed all remaining patches from stock as they all were sub-par.  They will be replacing the patches once they get more stock in that look better.  Looks like they do recognize problems once they are pointed out.  Now to see if they follow through!

Greg

[titanII]

lately they have been nothing but good to me.

+1
Last month, I ordered a CAP tape, a name tape, a flag patch, and a wing patch. They were shipped to me ahead of the predicted delivery date; and both the name tape and CAP tape were high quality. None of the patches had any of the problems some of you have noted.

A few weeks ago I ordered a tie and tie bar. Again they were shipped to me a few days before I expected them, and I didn't have any problems with quality. In fact I found the tie to be a higher quality than I expected.

However, according to what has been posted here, YMMV.

[Al Sayre]

IIRC, either here or on CS, one of the Vanguard folks actually posted a couple of responses, so I suspect they are probably at least lurking and following threads about them.  I'll be the first to admit that their customer service is light years ahead of where it was when they first became the official supplier, and that in general, their quality control has greatly improved..

[Sapper168]

I orderd a couple of GT badges (embroidered and metal) from them last week so we will see when they arrive how bad they actually look. And if the embroidered ones are too craptastic, i only wasted a couple of dollars and will just wear the badge on my dress uniform.

[RiverAux]

As a followup to my bad quality patches.  I got a very nicely written reply from Vanguard about my EMT patches.  They apologized and recognized the problem.  They have removed all remaining patches from stock as they all were sub-par.  They will be replacing the patches once they get more stock in that look better.  Looks like they do recognize problems once they are pointed out. 

Glad to see they're taking the appropriate action, but it shouldn't be up to CAP members to find the problems and complain about them.  If it was the entire batch, then they've got an internal quality control problem that needs to be fixed.  You would hope that someone is actually taking a look at the product they buy before filling orders with it. 

[Майор Хаткевич]

As a followup to my bad quality patches.  I got a very nicely written reply from Vanguard about my EMT patches.  They apologized and recognized the problem.  They have removed all remaining patches from stock as they all were sub-par.  They will be replacing the patches once they get more stock in that look better.  Looks like they do recognize problems once they are pointed out. 

Glad to see they're taking the appropriate action, but it shouldn't be up to CAP members to find the problems and complain about them.  If it was the entire batch, then they've got an internal quality control problem that needs to be fixed.  You would hope that someone is actually taking a look at the product they buy before filling orders with it.

I have 3.5 years experience (on going) doing just that. I've also excelled in my management classes just to find out I don't really like management. If Vanguard is willing to relocate me to do the job, I'm more than willing.