Unreadable Barcodes Cause Lost Profits?

Unreadable barcodes can cause lost man hours, shipping delays and compliance fines which lead to lost profits.

This is a common problem companies experience with their thermal barcode label printers from time to time. We receive phone calls several times a year asking for help. In fact, some of the people that call us are in a panic because they are being charged excessive compliances fines by their vendors for barcodes that are unreadable. This is on top of the lost man hours and shipping delays they are experiencing.

Let’s say suddenly you or your customers are having problems reading the barcodes on the labels that you printed. You have no idea as to the reason. You know that you are using quality printers from Zebra, Printronix, Datamax, Intermec, TSC and Sato; and regardless of which one of these printers are being used to print the thermal transfer labels, you are still getting complaints and you cannot figure out why.

Here is one area that you can investigate that most people do not even think about.

These failures can be due to the barcode not printing properly or being scratched during the handling and shipment of the item.

Certain formulations of wax and or wax/resin ribbons, designed for thermal transfer printers, when coupled with certain grades of label paper, will not allow the barcode information to actually adhere securely to the label. When this occurs, the slightest scratch or even another item rubbing against the label could cause parts of the barcode to rub-off.

If you suspect this could be your problem, contact us. With a specially designed electronic meter that measures the actual adherence properties of the wax and/or resin “resiliency” to the label, we may be able to quickly solve this issue.

MIDCOM has often been able to save customers thousands of dollars in penalty fees paid to their vendors for having non-compliant and non-readable barcodes. With any more questions you can always talk to one of our Specialist now at (800) 643-2664 .