Engraving Wizard

My experience with engraving wizard was horrible. I took a plaque there to be perm-​plaqued. Upon dropping it off I was quoted $ 100, I was told that if the price was anymore they would contact me. I was never contacted until it was done. When I arrived to pick up the plaque, they told me my total was $ 180. Almost twice as much as I was quoted. Poor business practice & unethical.

Great engraving company. I have used them for years, and most often in the last year. The staff is very approachable, knowledgable and professional. Everyone there is always full of smiles and have great suggestions when you just don’t know what you want exactly. Ive brought in numerous items to be worked on and the quality of work performed is outstanding. Becoming a regular, has allowed me to meet some of their other patrons and they have all been satisfied with engraving wizard. I know they’ve been working with new machines that will allow them an even greater spectrum of possibilities that i cant wait to discuss with them. Just as soon as i can free up some cash and time, of course. Ive shown many friends and new acquaintances of all the work they have done for me and have expressed interest in doing the same. I mostly bring in firearms that I have custom built from ground up. To me, the engraving is the stamp of approval of a finished product. I am aware of other gun owners who intrust their firearms worth thousands of dollars to Engraving Wizard, and their trust has never been misplaced. I will add only a few photos to show off their work but only limited views for privacy reasons. So long as my friends and myself have ideas, they will continue to have our business. Thank you.

I find it interesting that this place only has 5 reviews and two of them are written by the same person using two different accounts. Upon doing some research, I have found that Mike L «, Mikey,» and Mike L who have written 2 out of the 3 positive reviews are indeed the son of the owner who shares the same name, Mike Lohman. If you look under the review guidelines for Unilocal you will see this not appropriate per their conflicts of interest section.
My experience with the Engraving Wizard was bad from the start. I was quoted $ 95 as the final price for my plaque which then jumped to over $ 200 due to the non trained front desk person, Max. Max is actually a nice guy and aims to please he just hasn’t had sufficient training. Tiffany is the one who called me three days later (closed on weekends so that killed two days) to tell me my price had more than doubled. When I went over the conversation with her she was rather unprofessional and it reminded me of working with a teenager. She flat out said «well Max isn’t really supposed to be working in the front and that is why he didn’t give you the right price» Thanks Tiffany. This is now two days before I need the plaque in hand for a ceremony. They asked me to accept a used plaque which was several shades darker than the one I had picked out in order to get the price lowered to $ 130 (still $ 35 higher than the original quote). They used tacky metal hole fillers stuck in the holes of the previous plate that had been screwed on. My wood had a dark center and light outline from fading of plate on there prior. The back had scratches as did the front and there was even a label from the old engraving company which had an Engraving Wizard sticker over it. When I spoke to both Tiffany and Max on my second in person meeting, I was specific about having a rainbow design engraved into the wood. They gave me a name badge as you’d find on a grocery store employee as a sample and suggested they make a rainbow out of that material. I explicitly stated «No plastic on my plaque.» Max told me he would try out some options for the wood engraving and figure it out. I heard nothing more from them until I called the day of pickup around 11am to see if it was finished. I was told that it would not be ready until the end of the day, 4:30pm. I showed up at 4:30 and waited another 10 minutes for it to be ready. I was then handed the plaque that was unreadable due to font size and color which was the same color as the wood. It also had the gigantic plastic rainbow which I specifically had said I did not want. At that point, I was screwed. I had to be at an event from 5:30pm til 10pm that evening and the ceremony was at 8 am the next day. There was nothing I could do about this plaque. I simply paid for it and left. The next day I called the owner to discuss the plaque and how they had failed me in many ways but most importantly, had not produced what I asked for. The owner, Mike Lohman, was rude, argumentative and very defensive. Not once did he even acknowledge that his employee committed to engraving a rainbow into a wood plaque and that is not what was produced. Mr. Lohman proceeded to call Max into his office during our call and had us all on speaker phone together. I found this rather unprofessional as I believe he should have talked to his employee and sorted it out amongst themselves rather than pulling me into the conversation. I spent 30 minutes arguing with Max and Mr. Lohman about the facts. Mr. Lohman never backed down. He offered to «fix» the plaque by embedding the rainbow into the wood and coloring the lettering with gold fill. In my opinion this was going to make it look even worse and still not what I ordered. I came back two weeks later and asked for a refund. I explained how I was not willing to accept his offer to fix it, that I didn’t believe we were on the same page in regards to our visions for the plaque design and that I just wanted my money back. He refused. I then pointed out for the second or third time that this plaque was a memorial for a 9 yr old who had passed away and was purchased by a Girl Scout troop comprised of her friends. This plaque was presented to their elementary school to hang as a memorial. He had not one ounce of sympathy, compassion or concern about the image of his business. I told him that I was not the only person who did not like the plaque and that all of us had decided to find another solution. Our solution was only 20 minutes away at Thousand Oaks Trophies. Our plaque is now beautiful and readable and was only $ 60!

They do great work here, just a little pricey.

Wow. Is all I have to say. My name badges for our conference were wonderful. The staff is so kind and able to make things happen.

This company was amazing! They were able to customize awards for our annual awards banquet in Jacksonville, Fl within 5 days! The quality was outstanding and the customer service was superb… Thanks again.

Unfortunately, the only review here will be negative. They had two separate opportunities to do these jobs correctly and did not. Both times they bungled it. Each time they had opportunities to make it right and could not.