How I Wasted $890 on Christmas Cards (And the Checklist That Could Have Saved Me)

September 2022. I'm staring at 500 boxed Christmas cards from American Greetings, and every single one has our CEO's name spelled wrong. Not a typo I made—a typo I approved. The cards are beautiful. The sentiment is perfect. And they're going straight into recycling.

I've been handling promotional materials and corporate gift orders for six years now. In that time, I've personally made (and documented) 23 significant mistakes, totaling roughly $4,200 in wasted budget. The Christmas card disaster was my most expensive single error. Now I maintain our team's checklist to prevent others from repeating my mistakes.

The Day Everything Looked Fine

We'd ordered American Greetings printable cards before—smaller runs for client thank-yous, holiday greetings for key accounts. The process seemed straightforward. Upload your message, preview the design, approve, done.

For our corporate holiday mailing, I'd been asked to order 500 boxed Christmas cards. These weren't the printable cards I was used to; these were pre-designed cards where we'd add a custom printed insert. Different product, different workflow. I didn't fully register that distinction.

The insert text came from our marketing team: a holiday message signed by our CEO. I copied it into the order form, checked that it looked centered, and approved. The preview showed a festive design with elegant typography. Looked great.

What I didn't do: read the actual text character by character. I trusted that since marketing sent it, marketing had proofed it.

The Discovery

The cards arrived three weeks later, boxed and ready for mailing. I pulled one out to admire the finished product before we started stuffing envelopes.

"Merry Christmas from all of us at [Company Name]. Warmest regards, Micheal Thompson."

Micheal. Not Michael.

I checked another card. Micheal. Another. Micheal. All 500.

The CEO's name is Michael. Had been Michael for his entire 58 years of existence. The marketing coordinator who drafted the message had made a typo. I'd approved it without catching it. And now we had 500 cards with our CEO's name misspelled—cards we were about to send to clients, partners, and board members.

The Cost Breakdown

Here's what that "i before e" error actually cost:

The cards themselves: $340 for 500 boxed Christmas cards with custom inserts. Wasted.

Rush reorder: $380. We needed the corrected cards within a week to meet our mailing deadline, so we paid the rush fee. American Greetings can move fast when you pay for it.

My time: roughly 4 hours dealing with the reorder, the internal explanation, and the recycling logistics. At my hourly rate, that's about $170 in labor.

Total damage: $890, plus the uncomfortable conversation where I had to tell our CEO that I'd approved cards with his name spelled wrong.

The replacement cards were perfect. They arrived on time. The mailing went out. Nobody outside our office ever knew about the mistake.

But I knew. And I decided that was the last time I'd approve anything without a verification system.

What I Built: The Pre-Approval Checklist

Everything I'd read about quality control said to proof carefully. In practice, I found that "proof carefully" isn't actionable—it's a vague intention that fails under time pressure. What I needed was a checklist I couldn't skip.

After the third rejection in Q1 2024 (different project, same root cause—missed details), I created our team's pre-check list. We've caught 47 potential errors using this checklist in the past 18 months.

The checklist isn't complicated. That's the point. It forces you to slow down and verify specific elements:

Names and Titles
Every proper noun gets verified against an official source. Not memory—an actual document. For our CEO, that means checking against the company letterhead or his LinkedIn profile. Sounds paranoid until you remember that "Micheal" cost us $890.

Dates and Numbers
If there's a date in the content, verify it's correct AND that it makes sense in context. I once approved a "Happy New Year 2024" card in January 2024—technically correct, but we were mailing in late January, so recipients would get it in February. Looked foolish.

Contact Information
Phone numbers, email addresses, URLs—anything someone might actually use. Call the phone number. Visit the URL. We caught a typo in a phone number on promotional materials last March because someone actually dialed it during review. Wrong number, wrong company, very awkward if it had shipped.

Quantities and Specifications
Double-check that the order quantity matches the approved quantity. Verify card size, paper type, envelope type. I've seen orders where someone ordered 5,000 instead of 500—one extra zero, $3,000 difference.

The Part About Price That Nobody Wants to Hear

After the Christmas card disaster, I briefly considered switching to a cheaper card vendor. The logic seemed sound: if we're going to make mistakes, at least make cheaper mistakes.

That $200 savings I calculated? It would have turned into a much bigger problem.

The budget vendor I considered had a 10-business-day turnaround minimum. No rush options. If I'd made the same mistake with them, we'd have missed our mailing deadline entirely—no recovery possible. American Greetings' rush option saved our holiday mailing.

In my experience managing corporate gift orders for six years, the lowest quote has cost us more in 60% of cases. Not because cheap vendors are bad—sometimes they're fine. But because when things go wrong (and things go wrong), recovery options matter more than the original price.

From the outside, it looks like vendors just need to work faster for rush orders. The reality is rush orders often require completely different workflows and dedicated resources. That's why rush fees exist. And that's why having a vendor who offers rush options—even expensive ones—is worth the higher base price.

What I'd Tell Myself in September 2022

The checklist exists because of the Christmas cards. But the lesson behind it is simpler: you can't catch what you don't look for.

I looked at that preview screen and saw a beautiful card. I didn't look for errors because I'd already decided the card was ready. The preview confirmed what I wanted to see.

Now, before approving any American Greetings order—printable cards, boxed Christmas cards, anything—I read the text out loud. Slowly. Character by character for names. It feels tedious. It takes an extra three minutes. And it's saved me from at least four errors that I know of.

The conventional wisdom is that proofreading is someone else's job—marketing writes it, procurement orders it, done. My experience with 200+ orders suggests that the person clicking "approve" owns the error, regardless of who created it.

That $890 was tuition. Expensive tuition. But I haven't misspelled a CEO's name since.

The Checklist (If You Want It)

Before approving any printed materials order:

☐ All proper nouns verified against official source (not memory)
☐ All dates checked for accuracy AND appropriateness
☐ All contact info tested (call numbers, visit URLs)
☐ Order quantity matches approved quantity
☐ Text read aloud, character by character for names
☐ Someone other than the author has reviewed the content

That last point is the one I skipped in 2022. The marketing coordinator wrote the text. I assumed they'd proofed it. They assumed I'd proof it. Nobody actually proofed it.

The question isn't whether you'll make mistakes with orders. It's whether you'll catch them before they cost $890.