Card arrived with wrong expiration date

Opened my package and the expiration date on the card didn't match the proof I'd approved. The proof had shown a date four years out; the card had a date two years out. Here's how I handled it.

First: verify against your proof

Before contacting the vendor, make sure you have a record of the approved proof. I had a screenshot of the proof review page with the correct expiration date visible. This is the key piece of evidence. Without it, a dispute about what the proof showed becomes harder to resolve.

Compare the approved proof against the delivered card carefully. Sometimes what looks like an expiration date error is actually a date of birth misread, or a field that appears in a different position than expected. Confirm you're looking at the right field before raising it as an error.

Contacting the vendor

I sent one message with: my order number, a photo of the incorrect field on the delivered card, and a screenshot of the proof showing the correct date. I asked for a replacement card corrected to the approved date.

The vendor acknowledged the error within 24 hours and confirmed it was a production data entry mistake — the correct date was in the proof system but a different date was written into the print job. They offered a replacement under priority production.

Timeline

From reporting the error to receiving the replacement took 12 days. The replacement was correct. The vendor didn't charge for the reprint.

Preventing this

When you receive a card, spend two minutes checking every field against the proof before anything else. Expiration dates, dates of birth, addresses, and license numbers are the fields most prone to transcription errors. Catching an error immediately after delivery gives you the cleanest resolution path — the proof is fresh, the evidence is clear, and the vendor hasn't closed the order file yet.