I'm guessing you haven't worked in print before then. Do you have a design background or a broker background?

I work in prepress/design at a printing company and when client hands me a card to reprint, they have a few options:

1. Send me the original design file for me to prepare a print ready pdf
2. Send me a print ready pdf
3. Client does not have access to files and requires the job to be recreated at a cost

No logo is too complex to recreate. A designer designed the logo. Another designer can recreate it.

ideally the original business card file is provided and sent to the printer. it sounds like your customer doesn't have the business card file, so they would need to provide a vector file of the logo and you'd have to rebuild the business card using that.

it sounds like you don't have that experience, so i'd start with asking the client for a digital file of their business card. they can get it from whoever designed it in the first place.

They do not have it. I have the ability to recreate it but they do not want to spend the money on art fees. they tell me another print shop was able to reproduce it by scanning it. Would I need a better scanner for situations like this?

If it's a scan of something that's already been scanned and printed, then it's going downhill.

How badly do you want them as a customer? You have a few options...

1. Recreate it for free. If it's a good customer that brings you a lot of work, it may be worth doing it.
2. Refuse the job if they can't provide you what they need. If you don't mind losing the business, you can do this. Sometimes there are customers that are more trouble than they are worth.
3. Scan it, send them a proof, and tell them that's the best it's going to look unless they can provide you with something better.

I've done all three of these in the past for various reasons.

Thanks, I will consider those options.

In my experience, scanning will look bad. But if that's what they insist on, even after my explanation, then go for it. If they are at all fussy about quality or colour, then walk away. It will be very hard to match an original by scanning.

Personally, I think no business card is better than a bad business card.

Cosmo and Buda pretty much nailed it. From a pre-press perspective I love nothing more than getting in a Press Ready PDF with proper crop marks, bleeds, and vector images and the thing I hate the most are JPG (or worse, GIF) scans or web images of logos, business cards, etc.

I've personally become adept at recreating logos and forms because I do it day in day out to the point where I can usually nail fonts and sizes on the first attempt (The salesmen like to try to stump me, and I think I'm the only one in the world that uses the what the font app on his phone). But, at the end of the day rebuilding something takes time, and time means money. If they're a good client that we seen a weekly or monthly basis, I don't mind cleaning things up for them.

Design firms, however, don't slip under the radar. I feel their people should know things; like the difference between Pantone 032 and Pantone 032C and Pantone 032U, and NOT use them all in the same file; or the importance of defining a bleed area on files that bleed AND using it.

I'm getting some good feedback from everyone, Thank You! It helps me out alot and Firefighter, I like your quotes at the end.

This exists?

What the font Mobile App Link -----------> HERE

For Iphone or Andriod. Simply use your camera to take a picture, use the app tools to crop and select the font, upload and get information back just like on the website. Sadly, I've used it fairly regularly outside the office when I need to know what font they've used and it's driving me crazy (sort of like getting a song stuck in your head)!

Funnily enough, one of my clients, who is a print broker first told me about What The Font mobile

Yes, he is in my good books.

This just plain boggles my mind.
A print broker should know all this before calling themselves a print broker.

Well, should is a loaded term.

I've met many print brokers that don't have a clue what they are doing. They make some expensive mistakes along the way.

Race to the bottom, my friends.

I'm an astronaut!