Let's beat a dead horse: Shirt Quality

So I suppose we all know shirt quality, or rather print quality from shirt woot is sketchy at best nowadays. My old shirts look very good after years of wear and washing whereas new shirts deteriorate after just a few wears/washes.

Enter the recent purchase of ‘SHIRT’ shirts. First problem, the print on my daughter’s small shirt was noticibly larger than the print on my 3xl. The print on hers runs basically armpit to armpit.

Second issue is quality. After one single wear and wash, lots of tears in the letters appeared. You guys should do better after all these years.

CS sent a replacement 3xl for the print size error (the replacement was only slightly larger and still smaller than the small shirt.)

CS then refunded the order after my complaint about quality. CS IS GREAT.

my complaint is quality. I’m losing confidence in the shirts and cannot justify purchasing them unless there is a great improvement.

This is after one wash.

The smaller ‘shirt’ on top is 3xl, the bottom is small.

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I had the same cracking and fading with a black cat on a heather gray shirt. And other problems… I’ve only been buying the shirts when I can get them super cheap. The heather blue ones and ones that don’t have large inked areas are doing better.

Sadly, this is also a design trend in some instances, def not just Woot. When I queried another popular shirt vendor about the same issue, but only on some shirts, they explained that it was made that way so that the shirt will look retro after several washings. They haven’t answered my question regarding whether I’ll still have a printed shirt in two years. I have a Windows XP release promo shirt that I still wear - I doubt anything designed to expedite the ‘retro’ look will hold on more than a year.

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Shirt quality has definitely gone downhill. I’ve been buying shirts from Woot for years, and the latest few shirts I’ve had are in bad shape. I purchased this for my son; it’s only 3 months old, with only a few washings. It’s in terrible shape, and I doubt it’ll last the rest of the year.

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My “Its a Trap” did the same thing after the first wash. I told CS and they gave me a 6 dollar coupon.

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Hi there. It definitely should not do that. Please reach out to Woot! Customer Service.

From a browser, use the Woot! Customer Service form.

In the Woot! App, choose Account from the bottom navigation and then Support.

I agree totally. We bought Woot shirts for the fam every year for years, but last year quality fell dramatically. I bought myself Camp Hobbiton to camp this summer. It was illegible by March and now there’s just some few brown spots remaining from the original print. Sam with almost all of our shirts. Looking for a new shirt site, which is super sad.

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So any improvement yet?

@mydearWootson See, this is why I think you should take the OG White Christmas to a qualified print shop.

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I am certain that the shirt woot staff knows the quality has tanked, customer service surely knows it, and so do the forum moderators. Unfortunately, no one seems to care. I ordered a couple last week on the 70% off coupon…I had to decide if it was worth two wears of a shirt to justify the purchase, meanwhile I’m currently wearing a 4 year old woot shirt that has been washed literally dozens of times without a single issue with the art peeling.

I seem to remember that these issues started cropping up when they went to digital prints vs. screen prints.

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Agreed shirt quality has tanked. I have several that aren’t legible after a few washes.

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For what it’s worth, all of my shirts are just fine, including recent purchases.

However, I bought a couple of shirts from another place that has old ties to this one (I had a coupon) that started fading the first time I washed them.

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Add me to the list…I have woot shirts older than 10 years that still look very good.

Since the change, the shirts don’t seem to last more than a few washes.
The print just peels off.

Customer support sounds surprised when approached on this subject.
Sure…you’ve never heard of these issues.

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“It shouldn’t do that.” Correct. My question: why does every single shirt bought at Woot for the last year and a bit do that? I think whoever you are outsourcing your shirt printing to has dropped the ball and sucks really bad now. Time for a new provider? I stopped buying woot shirts at all because I’ve been getting the shirt without the “r”. If this is refundable, I have a stack of shirts that look just like this from woot and Amazon.

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Yup! This is the problem right here - no one gives a shirt.

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As someone who has multiple years worth of shirts from shirt.woot, a majority on AA but still hundreds that are newer digital prints (DTG):

  • No doubt the old screen printed ones are the most durable, so much so that some of mine has outlived the shirt it’s printed on.

  • Between the combination of poor fit and the early beginnings of the back catalog, the Anvil era have held up the worst, especially the mutant Anvils.

  • All shirts from the back catalog is DTG. Almost everything, dailies included, from July 2016 onwards has been printed DTG.

  • In all these years of buying new, I’ve had more issues with initial print quality (streaky and/or missing print due to clogged printheads) or shirt blank defects versus DTG print durability issues.

  • As a number of Wooters are also aware of, the majority of my shirt.woot collection is second hand. If this was a truly a widespread issue, I’m pretty sure I’d be running across more of these defective shirts more often – and I’ve ran across shirts in thrift stores that weren’t even reckoned yet during the Anvil era. But I’m not, and at least a couple dozen of these second hand shirts are DTG, and the printing is indeed intact. They’re not all in perfect shape, but the signs of wear correlated to the shirt wear (fading, abrasion at the seams, etc.) and we’re not full on worn away.

From what I know, the causes of durability issues are usually due to an improper curing of the ink after it was printed or a misapplication of pretreatment. Alas, this could affect a customer’s entire order batch because the same printer and dryer would be used by the operator. It sucks, but that’s why there’s customer service.

Shirt.woot and Amazon Merch sells by the thousands and thousands; if it’s truly a widespread issue, there’s be much much more complaining.

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The peeling adds to the theme.

I don’t bother to complain anymore because I stopped paying full price for shirts. Besides, those who shall not be named have enough to do with the Amazon screw ups.

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My SHIRT shirt has already started peeling, I haz a sad. :cry:

Printed on a Fitted tee - have the issues others have had been more on fitted vs classic?

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I have bought lots of Woot t-shirts and wear them frequently and have not seen wear and tear issues at all.

I have a closet full of refunds waiting if they offer it.

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