Shirt.Woot

j5 wrote:<1% defect rate is pretty damned good. Take that, China!

Over 5 years it's under 1%. I'd be willing to bet that it's higher, percentage wise, over the last 4 months than it is over that whole period. I still don't think they're to 2% yet, but we also know they don't get a 100% reporting rate. (about 50% of the posts on this thread state "I never called customer service.)

Personally I've got 3 errors for 20 shirts, but 1 of them I didn't notice before reading through all of these, and both of the others were specifically glow in the dark ink on the same shirt, so really that's 1 bad print, or 5%.

bounty42 wrote:Over 5 years it's under 1%. I'd be willing to bet that it's higher, percentage wise, over the last 4 months than it is over that whole period. I still don't think they're to 2% yet, but we also know they don't get a 100% reporting rate. (about 50% of the posts on this thread state "I never called customer service.)

Personally I've got 3 errors for 20 shirts, but 1 of them I didn't notice before reading through all of these, and both of the others were specifically glow in the dark ink on the same shirt, so really that's 1 bad print, or 5%.

Does that include "wrong size" snafu's for women and kids? Because those would absolutely skew it high.

ProfHotpants wrote:Just to give you a bit of insight to the process, with a crooked print it's very unlikely that multiple prints were affected. The shirts are loaded onto the palette by hand, and to get a crooked print the shirt would be crooked on the palette to begin with. I agree with you that it should be caught by the QC check at the end of the press, but as I said before we have humans doing this work, and they sometimes overlook something. They are QC-ing thousands of pieces each day, and while there are multiple checks in place (during the process, at the end of the print process, when packaging the item, etc) sometimes mistakes are made. We are very happy to replace or refund any flawed products. We encourage anyone with any issues to contact service@woot.com

Over the past five years, our customer service issues have remained steadily below 1% of total sales. We log every complaint, and examine them for trends or larger issues. Thus far, even with quantity increases and new products, our customer service issues have remained steadily low (significantly below 1% of total sales).

Our customer service team typically responds within 48 hours of receiving a complaint, and is always willing to do whatever is necessary to make our customers happy. (We love you guys. You mean the world to us. Seriously.)

These stats are pretty amazing! And woot's customer service is second to none!

Even with this information, it really does seem like there has been more quality issues than normal the past few months. And I'm still waiting on the answer to the blank quality problems. Forget the giant neckhole (although it's hard to forget), but what about the huge shrinkage problem? It has never been addressed. Will it be?

The quality of the print is only part of the problem. The quality of the canvas also needs to be addressed.

j5 wrote:Does that include "wrong size" snafu's for women and kids? Because those would absolutely skew it high.

No, though I do think that the Size Issue will mask part of the errored issue: people aren't going to be measuring for centering, or paying attention to how they wash, etc. on a shirt they're never actually going to wear.

ThunderThighs wrote:Please go ahead and email sevice@woot.com with the information.

@ThunderThighs, I did email service@woot.com on 8/8/2012 and today is 8/15/2012 and have no response yet. Did my message end up in the spam folder or something?

neuropsychosocial wrote:

Wow, and I thought my READ being misaligned was bad. This one is horrible.

j5 wrote:<1% defect rate is pretty damned good. Take that, China!

Depends on what you're referring to. Would you want your heart surgeon to have a 1% failure rate? What about your airplane pilot? Imagine if 1% of the landings were crashes. That 1% suddenly seems pretty large doesn't it?

The fact that these are just shirts make the 1% seems small in comparison.

ThunderThighs wrote:Hmmm, sure does seem like it got lost somewhere. Send another email. Just curious, did you use the form or direct email?

For this one, use your email and send it again to service@woot.com. I'll send something in as well. That should get you covered.

They are swamped so give them some time to answer you but it shouldn't take more than 48 hours (business days) although they try for 24.

@ThunderThighs, sent it through regular email so I could attach the images. Could it be that the images were too large? What I'll do is upload those images to a web server and then change the email to include links to those images instead of a direct attachment.

cengland0 wrote:Depends on what you're referring to. Would you want your heart surgeon to have a 1% failure rate? What about your airplane pilot? Imagine if 1% of the landings were crashes. That 1% suddenly seems pretty large doesn't it?

The fact that these are just shirts make the 1% seems small in comparison.

E=mc^2
I'm refering to shirt production as this is a shirt production defect thread, though I would be interested to know the crash to success ratio of Chinese airlines compared to other countries.

cengland0 wrote:@ThunderThighs, sent it through regular email so I could attach the images. Could it be that the images were too large? What I'll do is upload those images to a web server and then change the email to include links to those images instead of a direct attachment.

Linking to images is your best bet. Large attachments get filtered and seldom make it through, from what I and others have seen. If you don't get the automated reply and a case number, your email didn't get through.

Just as a followup to be fair, they did send a replacement via FedEx and it has no issues.

cengland0 wrote:Depends on what you're referring to. Would you want your heart surgeon to have a 1% failure rate? What about your airplane pilot? Imagine if 1% of the landings were crashes. That 1% suddenly seems pretty large doesn't it?

The fact that these are just shirts make the 1% seems small in comparison.

What makes you think we don't have a 1% failure rate on both of those?

While these printing errors are errors, few of them compromise the totality of the shirt. I have 3 errors, all of which I wear and I never actually get comments on the error: they aren't 'fatal' just 'annoying'. So yeah, I think when you actually look not at death but at "death, infection, over intented time, etc" and not at "firey death" but at "firey death, delayed landing or departure, unintended rerouting, etc." you'll see that both heart surgery and pilots have a greater than 1% error rate.

It's not not your error rate, it's your unresolved error rate.

After wearing my shirt a couple days, Ive changed my mind and asked for a replacement. I thought it wouldnt be a big deal, but its just SO crooked it bugs the hell out of me.

trekmiss wrote:These stats are pretty amazing! And woot's customer service is second to none!

Even with this information, it really does seem like there has been more quality issues than normal the past few months. And I'm still waiting on the answer to the blank quality problems. Forget the giant neckhole (although it's hard to forget), but what about the huge shrinkage problem? It has never been addressed. Will it be?

The quality of the print is only part of the problem. The quality of the canvas also needs to be addressed.

With all due respect, blank QC is Anvil's problem first and foremost. Woot can perhaps sniff out rips and glaring problems, but Anvil's far worse construction standards compared to numerous similar blanks is not something they can change without changing blanks. Woot can't make them shrink less, nor make them wearably soft. If your problem is with the blanks themselves, and for many people it is, and having worn almost every blank in the biz I can't blame them, then your only real recourse is not buying at woot anymore, or waiting for them to switch to a quality blank.

This thread is incredibly disheartening though, because the one thing I felt woot was consistently good at was print quality. Early on, there were issues when designs went beyond their capability. As time went on, these issues even were less frequent: five years and millions of shirts later, the quality should really just be improving more and more, but I've never seen this many issues in one thread before now. The crooked ones are especially damaging... I can chalk fuzziness up to oversight, but not a 30 degree angle on a square design.

AdderXYU wrote:With all due respect, blank QC is Anvil's problem first and foremost. Woot can perhaps sniff out rips and glaring problems, but Anvil's far worse construction standards compared to numerous similar blanks is not something they can change without changing blanks. Woot can't make them shrink less, nor make them wearably soft. If your problem is with the blanks themselves, and for many people it is, and having worn almost every blank in the biz I can't blame them, then your only real recourse is not buying at woot anymore, or waiting for them to switch to a quality blank.

This thread is incredibly disheartening though, because the one thing I felt woot was consistently good at was print quality. Early on, there were issues when designs went beyond their capability. As time went on, these issues even were less frequent: five years and millions of shirts later, the quality should really just be improving more and more, but I've never seen this many issues in one thread before now. The crooked ones are especially damaging... I can chalk fuzziness up to oversight, but not a 30 degree angle on a square design.

That is my point. I know that Woot cannot fix the Anvil blanks, so they should ditch them. I haven't purposely bought any Anvil shirts, but I received 2 in my last randoms.

I'm also saying that even if Woot does get a handle these printing errors, there is still a problem because of the poor quality of the blanks.

The fact is, though, that they have not even acknowledged that there is a quality problem with the blanks. Shrinking 3+ inches in one wash is a problem that goes beyond preferences like sizes, neck holes, and the cut of the shirt.

trekmiss wrote:I'm so sad. I went to wear my Cranes Nouveau shirt today and realized the neck is messed up. I thought it was creased from being in the mail bag or just folded funny, but it's twisted somehow. What makes it worse is that it is an AA shirt. I wish I would have inspected better before it was too late to replace it. Of course I have contacted service@woot.com, but I know this means I have an unwearable, irreplaceable shirt.

Well, I was wrong. The shirt was NOT irreplaceable! I'm so excited, because today I received a replacement via FedEx and it was on AA! The collar and print were perfect. Service@Woot saves the day, again! Thank you!

goldenthorn wrote:Soooo.... I received my Robbie/Edgar Haunted Robot yesterday! First sucker for my two favorite artists' collab, booyah!

And, at a first, from-a-distance glance, it's just as awesome and amazing as the woot mockup showed it would be:

(mine)
(woot preview)

But then I look closer, and the halftoning/colour layers are really off-looking. The blue souls of the people fighting back against the robot don't show on the shirt at all! And everything on top of the white washes the blues/aquas out and gives everything a chalky appearance. This is what it should look like:



And this is what mine look like:




If you right click and view image on my top photo of my full shirt design, you should be able to see that the half-toning and multi-layering on a white base are.... well, kind of a hot mess. There's pretty much no blue in the lasers or in the people, and the aquas all over are pretty washed out and muted. I don't know if this is a fault with the design itself or with the printing process, but the design gets rather off-looking when you see it up close. Sure, I guess it's something I can live with because the design is meant to look like a looser comic-ish layered design. The sloppiness doesn't make it totally unwearable. But the design didn't print like the preview showed it would/should be, and a HUGE point of the narrative of the design--that the human souls are laser-battling back with the robot spirits--is completely lost in the print.

How did other people's shirts print? The same? Different? Do you think this is something about which it's worth writing to service? I'm not really sure. The design is still kick-ass amazing awesomesauce when I'm not comparing it to the woot preview.

It's different. It isn't as good. IT IS NOT WHAT THE ARTIST INTENDED YOU TO HAVE. nor woot. Hell yeah, email them. they're only trying to help, and I'm sure they will. If only someone would help with the quality control...

Here's what I said in the birthday shirt thread. Just wanted to run it past you guys and see what you think.

Mine came in printed a little lower than i thought it would. Also count me in on the people who was hoping the picture was wrong and the shirt would arrive centered. I don't want another shirt because I probably wont wear this design anyways.

Besides, It could just be me. It looks close, but something just seems off to me so I don't know. I'll see what they think in the quality control thread.

What was shown

How it Came

To me, (and kalira) it looks like it was printed where it was supposed to (the large button and woot logo seem to line up) I'm just figuring maybe the design doesn't work with my body. I understand this could be hard to do, to make it look right for everyone, but this seems a little too far off for me.


Edit: Actually now that I think about it, this shirt probably wouldn't have been a problem if I could still fit into Anvil Mediums. Unfortunately they're just a little bit too short (AA's were *almost* too short) so I've had to upgrade to the baggier large. The shirt is probably 100% correct.

Now I'm certain I don't want a new shirt. I wasn't really planning on wearing this shirt though. Just wanted to add another one to my collection. Still a little bummed I couldn't wear it if I wanted to.

Unfortunately, I have another issue to add to this thread. I finally wore my new Anvil version of In Harmony from the side sale (couldn't right away as I was pregnant). The print colors are awful and completely different from the original run. The yellow is completely the wrong shade and the middle greens, which should look different due to half-toning, are all the same (wrong) shade. Will post pics once I get them. I don't need a replacement as this was an extra, but given how carefully I chose the print colors, it's incredibly disappointing as an artist to see my design look so sub-par.

Goldenthorn, I agree with Josephus; it's not how the artist intended the shirt to look and it suggests that the printing problems aren't quite fixed yet. It sounds like woot is trying to get there and - at least based on my own experiences in activities very different from screenprinting - withholding information doesn't typically help when someone is trying to improve something.

CowboyDann, I'm not sure whether you're asking if the design printed matched the mock-up (it looks a little lower) or if you're begging hte interwebz to tell you that you look fine in the shirt.

amreli, I'm sorry to hear that the shirt printed differently than you designed it. That's a real bummer and you sound disappointed. Hopefully woot will address some of these concerns about ink-colors-not-being-quite-right. On another note, it sounds like you've recently had a baby. Hope all are well!

After 2 washes, the design on this shirt has gotten all puckered up and weird. Hard to explain, but I hope the pics help. Being a dark shirt, it's hard to capture the little bits of stretched material around the design. It's like the shirt is stretching and shrinking, but the design stays the same.

I had one other shirt, The Season of Change, do this years ago, but it was after about a year of washes and wears, but after only 2 washes seems a little soon. Is this a shirt issue or a problem with the design itself?

ThunderThighs wrote:Sorry for the problems with the shirt. If you could send pictures along with your email to service@woot.com, they'll help you out.

Hey, I'm glad I came over and checked out the thread!

I was a bit nervous about my prints, but overall, I am ecstatic about how all of my designs printed. I've only gotten about half of them so far- the rest are in transit. Anyways, on my two copies of Haunted Robot, the blues ghosts in the people don't pop out as much as in the mock-up, but they definitely are visible (I didn't mind the obfuscation since they're ghosts). In the printer's defense, the half toning on this design is really tight, so there's not much room for error. Fortunately, the design is kind of built so if there is a little registration error (the blues and yellows on the bot, for example), it would be OK (and may even work in the design's favor since the aqua color isn't even there- it's the blue and yellow next to each other). I hope my justification here doesn't sound over-optimistic, but I really wasn't bothered by the lack of crispness. Anyways, I'll try to post some pics tonight when I get home to see if mine printed better than others.

I can say that I'm never 100% pleased when my tees arrive, whether they print at woot, Threadless, Good Joe, or DBH- there's almost always some kind of issue (and sometimes it's on me in my decisions (my Dark Side of Oz design has a goof which I traced back to my print ready file (but I don't think anybody caught it)), but I was overall pleased with Haunted Robot and very pleased with the printing in general. I think there was definitely something awry down there these past few months- I remember emailing Travis after my Springatron reprinted so poorly, but honestly I think they nailed the printing on my side sale (so far, like I said I've only gotten half of them).

Other notes is that the GITD ink on Squeeze was THICK so that thing lights up light crazy. It is definitely visible in the day light, but I think it's cool looking. Also, my Tin Old School hoodie printed absolutely perfectly. Much better than the original run when it debuted (it's a challenging print, too, esp. on a darker color). Eager Robot looks great (even better than I thought), You mean 10? looks good (although the highlight color is maybe too subtle- that's on me I think. Still, the design works overall and I was happy). I agree with the others that were disappointed in the coffee mugs a few side sales ago. That seems like a different issue, of course.

Anyways, like I said, Haunted Robot had a lot of supertight registration requrements the way we half toned it, but I'd be pretty bummed out if the blue ghosts disappeared completely (which they might have based on your photos, Goldenthorn), but they were, in fact, visible in mine (although not crisp like the shirt comp). If it's a problem, Goldenthorn, please PM me and maybe I can help out.

Thanks,

Robbie

2:40 EST, edited to clean it up a bit
2:44 EST, edited again for correction

ThunderThighs wrote:Sorry for the problems with the shirt. If you could send pictures along with your email to service@woot.com, they'll help you out.

Just to clarify, amreli is the artist of In Harmony and she's saying that she's disappointed that the colors she chose so carefully to express her design aren't being reproduced accurately for customers. Service is wonderful, but I'm guessing there isn't much that they can do to help her in this situation.

trekmiss, is that ramy's Read, which printed entirely on Anvil? If so, I'm guessing that yes, it is in fact shrinking and distorting around the design; there have been plenty of reports of Anvil doing so (although others have reported fewer problems with that), but the ink keeps the fabric from shrinking in that particular spot, so it would end up distorting around the design.

Mugs: I posted a review with two pictures and a link to more picture in the Caffiends thread. The short version is that it was about what I was expecting and I think it looks fine for what it is. If woot ever offers the mugs again, my two suggestions would be:
1) More realistic mock-ups, which might temper expectations.
2) Instead of printing one design with the logo on one side and the title/artist's info on the other, maybe print the image twice, with the logo/artist's info/title in the middle (opposite the handle). That way, whether someone was right- or left-handed, when she/he held the mug in his/her hand, she/he could see the entire image at once.

neuropsychosocial wrote:trekmiss, is that ramy's Read, which printed entirely on Anvil? If so, I'm guessing that yes, it is in fact shrinking and distorting around the design; there have been plenty of reports of Anvil doing so (although others have reported fewer problems with that), but the ink keeps the fabric from shrinking in that particular spot, so it would end up distorting around the design.

Yes, it's Ramy's READ. I got it in the last random, and have tried to give the Anvil shirt a very fair trial. I've worn the shirt and treated it just like any other Woot shirt. It's not holding up well at all. It's probably lost 4 inches in length, and the design is so wonky now. Even so, I tried to phrase my question in a way that it wasn't just another Anvil hate post. I'm guilty of plenty of those, but I wanted to honestly know if the issue was the design itself or the shirt blank.

trekmiss wrote:Yes, it's Ramy's READ. I got it in the last random, and have tried to give the Anvil shirt a very fair trial. I've worn the shirt and treated it just like any other Woot shirt. It's not holding up well at all. It's probably lost 4 inches in length, and the design is so wonky now. Even so, I tried to phrase my question in a way that it wasn't just another Anvil hate post. I'm guilty of plenty of those, but I wanted to honestly know if the issue was the design itself or the shirt blank.

I'm speculating, but combining a few different things, I wouldn't be surprised that it's a combination of the design and the shirt, but maybe not the printing, if that makes sense.
- Anvil blanks have been shrinking quite a bit
- the ink should protect the area underneath it from shrinking
- Read is an unusual design in that there are few->no contiguous areas with solid patches of ink; the design is made up of really small bits of ink placed closely together (I can't picture another recent design quite like it), so that might allow more shrinkage around the design that one might typically see.

As I said, I don't know that for sure; I'm just trying to use some critical reasoning skills to combine pieces of information that we do have. FWIW, Narfcake mentioned to me that he's seen Read at thrift stores far more than he's ever seen any other individual design. I don't know if that's relevant to the problems that you've observing, but it does make me wonder if there's a connection.

ThunderThighs wrote:Please go ahead and email sevice@woot.com with the information.

So I've sent a couple of emails to inform Woot about the crooked "READ" print and I haven't gotten a reply. I don't if its because I had an attachment or a link in the email...

Aaaand... I just got my The Sword from the Inkwell and the print printed too dark when compared to the original art work preview posted on the site.



It's most noticeable on the inkwell itself and most of the detail is lost on the way up to the dragon.



Is it suppose to be that dark? I'm curious to know if this the norm for this shirt....

original woot image for comparison-

Well I officially give up. *Sigh* Just got my second Unstealthy Ninja 3 replacement. Went for a Mens Medium this time to avoid the tiny print of the women's causing the pupils to disappear etc.

This is what I ended up with -__-



So firstly, its not even central. Wooo...





Secondly, the white print is wonky... again. This time, its so wonky, that half the ninja's pupils are grey instead of black cos the white and grey are so misaligned with each other. Sword highlights are in the water, the lines on the ninja clothes are wonky. Its just... well... it makes me sad.

I've emailed service again and requested a refund this time. I've given up to be honest. Whilst I think the artists do great work, and the service department is super helpful, the print department and the Anvil blanks are proving that its just not worth the hassle. It will have to be a pretty incredible design to make me risk spending any money at woot again.

Did anyone else receive an English Muffin shirt with a giant print on it?
http://shirt.woot.com/offers/english-muffin
I'm going to get out the tape measure and take pictures tonight, but it's basically unwearably large.
Stats say 3X - S: 7.5” x 10.76”
Picture shows the print in the upper portion of the shirt. My print ends only about 4-5 inches from the bottom of a mens XL.

Comparing to a sheet of 8.5x11 paper, it looks like the print is at least 15" long. It's not even close to the stats.

Here is my haunted robot (click for full size).
Should I be concerned?

j5 wrote:Here is my haunted robot (click for full size).
Should I be concerned?

@Goldenthorn, thanks for lumping me in with Edgar. He's so cool.

Sorry to take so long to snap a pic of mine (and all I have is this web cam). Anyways, mine looks like J5's, and I think it's OK. As for Goldenthorn's tee, that one looks a bit more fuzzy. Thanks to you guys that ordered- this one didn't sell many, so I'm glad you guys like it. (I love this design personally.)

rglee129 wrote:...(my Dark Side of Oz design has a goof which I traced back to my print ready file (but I don't think anybody caught it))

Are you talking about that little corner of the rug? It looks like the underbase is missing. I didn't notice it until after I washed it, and I thought the ink fell out, but that didn't make sense because it didn't happen anywhere else.

By the way, thats a cool texture on the rug. It printed really well. Did you texture the underbase and leave the yellow solid, or vice versa, or what? I've been playing with effects you can get with selective underbasing. But usually Woot does their own underbase layer, right?

rglee129 wrote:Anyways, mine looks like J5's, and I think it's OK.

I'm not sure if I can trust you, considering this:

rglee129 wrote:For some reason, though, I didn't even notice it was a gold metallic instead of a sliver metallic. Dang. Now I can't unsee it!

Thanks to you guys that ordered- this one didn't sell many, so I'm glad you guys like it. (I love this design personally.

The cool kidz have good taste.

ThunderThighs wrote:Just a reminder that if you think there's an issue with your shirt, email service@woot.com. A picture always helps.

I'm not sure if I have a problem or not. I'm not looking for a refund or anything silly, just wondering if the shirt is as expected. Should I wait to see what GT's replacement looks like?

j5 wrote:I'm not sure if I have a problem or not. I'm not looking for a refund or anything silly, just wondering if the shirt is as expected. Should I wait to see what GT's replacement looks like?

If you mixed up yours, Robbie's and GTs pics of the souls I would be unable to tell them apart.

blanked wrote:If you mixed up yours, Robbie's and GTs pics of the souls I would be unable to tell them apart.

I'd like to hear an art director weigh in. If it's a case of "this is how it is" then ok, but if it's a case of "that's just not right" then I'll see what's what.

weezerette wrote:Did anyone else receive an English Muffin shirt with a giant print on it?
http://shirt.woot.com/offers/english-muffin
I'm going to get out the tape measure and take pictures tonight, but it's basically unwearably large.
Stats say 3X - S: 7.5” x 10.76”
Picture shows the print in the upper portion of the shirt. My print ends only about 4-5 inches from the bottom of a mens XL.

Comparing to a sheet of 8.5x11 paper, it looks like the print is at least 15" long. It's not even close to the stats.

yes and they also sent the wrong size but only responded once. and was too late to get another the shirt was already reckoned. i orded a womens and they send a mens...and yes i checked the tag and they actually did send a mens by mistake..i have sent two more to service woot but no reply...i have purchased more shirts than i can count and really disappointed in the lack of customer service over this item.