Who Looks After Your Order at Hotline?

At Hotline, your order is looked after by a team rather than by one account manager. Everything about it, from your Visual Proof™ to your delivery date, lives in one place the whole team can see, so whoever picks up your query has the full picture from the first message.

It's a fair question to ask before you put your logo on anything: who's actually dealing with this? This guide explains how we've set things up, what that means for you from proof to delivery, and who's behind it.

Why we don't assign account managers

We don't assign account managers because we built our service around the order rather than around a go-between. Everything you need sits in your Hotline account, and anyone on our team can pick up where the last person left off.

Plenty of suppliers build their service around a named account manager, and plenty of buyers like it that way. We used to work like that too. What we found was that everything about a customer's account lived with one person, and when that person was off sick, on holiday or moved on, the knowledge went with them. The customer ended up explaining their order to someone new. Keeping that knowledge with the order, where the whole team can see it, means nothing has to be explained twice.

The other reason is the way ordering works at Hotline. In 1999 we became the first UK promotional products distributor to sell online, and we've been building on that ever since. You can go from a logo to a delivered order without waiting on anyone: upload your logo, get a free Visual Proof™ back, usually within 20 minutes during working hours, see the all-inclusive price and the guaranteed delivery date before you pay, then order and track it online. A go-between would add a step to that rather than remove one.

Everything about your order in one place

Your Hotline portal holds every Visual Proof™, order and delivery date in one account, so you can check anything without asking anyone. Use the Track My Order link at the top of the site to log in, and it's all there.

Before you order, each Visual Proof™ is saved in your account with its price quoted alongside, and that price is held for 14 days, which gives you time to get sign-off or raise a purchase order. The guaranteed delivery date is shown on the product page, on your proof and again in your basket, and once you've placed the order that date is locked. If you pay by BACS, it's confirmed once your payment arrives.

After you've ordered, the Order History tab in your portal shows the status of each order as it moves through production, and on delivery day the Track Package button takes you to the courier's tracking. We send automated updates along the way, so you know what's happening without having to chase.

Reordering works the same way. Buy Again reorders a product with the same artwork, and you can change the quantity or delivery date before you check out. If the artwork needs updating, request a new Visual Proof™ from the product page and our designers will prepare it for your approval.

The same thinking applies to your colleagues. Once you've verified your work email address, you can see orders placed by other people in your organisation, so if the person who ordered last year's event bags has moved on, the details haven't gone with them. You can also share a basket with a colleague by email, so they see exactly what you've chosen, with quantities and prices, before anyone commits.

How the Support Centre works

If you have a question about an order, you raise it in our Support Centre and a member of our team picks it up. You can log a query at any time of day, and our UK team is at work Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm.

When you log a query, you choose the section that fits, such as After-Sales for anything to do with an order you've already placed, and add the details that let us act on it straight away. If something has gone wrong with a delivery, that means photos as well as a description. Your query then becomes a record the whole team can see, with everything you've told us and everything we've done, so whoever picks it up isn't starting from scratch and nothing gets lost between people.

A support centre can sound like somewhere a query goes to wait. Ours is how a team of real people keeps track of every order, and how we make sure your query is answered whether or not any one person is at their desk that day.

It's also where the practical things get sorted: updating a delivery or invoice address after you've ordered, cancelling an order within the 12-hour cooling-off period at no cost, or asking about anything on your proof or in your basket that isn't clear before you pay.

The people behind it

Behind the website is a UK team based in Christchurch, Dorset, many of whom have been with Hotline since the early days. Every query in the Support Centre is read and answered by one of them.

Hotline was founded in 1989, which means more than 35 years of helping UK organisations put their logo on the right products. That experience sits with the people you deal with, from the designers who prepare your Visual Proof™ to the team who answer your queries. We're a member of the British Promotional Merchandise Association, and as a member we're required to follow its Code of Conduct.

Your Visual Proof™ is prepared by our in-house design team. They check your artwork, tell you if anything else is needed, and can often clean up or redraw a logo that's only available as a JPEG. You can request as many changes as you like before you approve it, and nothing goes to print until you have.

What customers say

Hotline is rated 4.9 out of 5 by more than 6,000 verified customers on our reviews page, and two things come up again and again: how easy it is to get an order through, and how quickly they hear back.

You can read every review on our reviews page, along with the independent reviews on Trustpilot.

If you'd like to see how it works, pick a product from our best sellers, upload your logo and request a free Visual Proof™. It's usually back within 20 minutes during working hours, with the price and your guaranteed delivery date alongside it.