TeeChip

Edit: I filed a claim with PayPal since TeeChip never corrected the issue and PayPal eventually sided with me. At least now I'm only out the money it costs to send the t-shirt back.

I ordered a t-shirt from a campaign on Teechip, but there was some error in processing and when I received an e-mail confirmation it contained the wrong t-shirt. I contacted customer service to attempt and get the issue resolved before the t-shirt shipped, but they waited until the day after it shipped to respond and simply said they could not do anything because it had already shipped.

I then opened a claim on their website to try and get the shirt exchanged. A month later, I was sent what was an obvious form reply asking for a picture of the t-shirt to confirm that it was not the t-shirt from the order. I attached the picture but reiterated that while this was the t-shirt listed in the order, that was not what I had purchased from the website and I simply wanted to exchange it for what should be in the order. After another month with no further contact, I sent another reply under that ticket. I never received another reply on that front.

After another month (now going on three months from the initial problem) I opened another claim, referenced my previous case number and told them I wanted a response. Once again, I told them the issue was that the wrong t-shirt was confirmed in the order - different from what was listed on the website when I finalized the purchase - and once again I was sent an obvious form reply asking for a picture. I sent the picture in again a second time and made very clear what the issue was. Several hour later, TeeChip replied and said they would not be able to replace my order "due to the product received as advertised." There was never an acknowledgement of my actual problem which I asked about multiple times, and I have not been able to get further response since then. I was also told that the campaign "had ended" despite the fact that both t-shirts in question were still available for purchase on their website.

Every response I got from their customer service was clearly a canned form and it appears to me that they dragged their feet knowing they would never fix the problem, because it was easier to pretend that nothing wrong had happened.

I ordered a shirt and unlike most people complaining I did receive my order and got it within a week. My problem is quality of the printing, it's blurry. Most of it is not readable, it almost looks like it was double printed.

Some of the shirt has small writing on it, I can understand if it's a little hard to read, but even the large words are blurry. It doesn't look like that in the advertisement. I'm a graphic artist, I work in the print industry on printing magazines. It looks like they took someones artwork and then enlarged the size 500%. It might come out looking good on a coffee mug, but when enlarged to the size of a tee shirt, it makes it look blurry.

I sent an email the day after I got the shirt, I got an answer a couple of days later saying

"We do not typically accept exchanges or returns due to the custom nature of our products. However if you have a flawed garment, your item was miss-sent, or you are unsatisfied with the quality we will compensate for that by filing a claim with our claims department. Please let me know if you would like to move forward with this resolution."

I did send another email saying I did want to make a claim, didn't hear anything. So I put something on Twitter, and someone from Teechip said that someone would be in contact with me. After a month of not hearing anything I sent my forth email, here is the latest response.

"I am very sorry to hear that there were problems with your order! That is certainly not the TeeChip commitment to excellence that we strive to provide.

Generally, we are unable to see to refunds or exchanges due to the custom nature of our product. However, given that you may have received the wrong garment, I have filed a claim on your behalf to look into the situation further. A Claim Representative will shortly be in contact to discuss a resolution."

In the first email they sent it states that if I was "unsatisfied" with the quality I could make a claim, second email from them makes it sound like I can only do it if the sent the wrong product.

I guess they can get by with sending out horrible quality because of the custom nature of their product. I understand a tie dye shirt or something hand painted being custom made, and that they won't all be the same. This is just a terrible print job, nothing to do with custom.

As I said, I'm a graphic artist and before seeing their terrible work actually had some ideas that I thought about sending in some ideas. I'm really glad I didn't let them destroy my artwork.