Order placed: September 17th, Artwork submitted same day, approved the following monday.
Here's what their web site says: "Proofs in 3 to 7 business days" Production in "3 to 5 business days" So we're talking a total of 6 to 12 business days.
Checked with company on 9/30 (10 business days from order). The tshirts hadn't been printed, and they weren't sure they had the tshirts in stock.
October 1: (10 business days from when we ordered), tshirts were shipped.
October 5th: Mysterious credit from them on my credit card. Emailed them. Response was "We were short two 4x size shirts, so we credited you."
Placed a telephone call. Apparently their tshirt supplier didn't have any 4x shirts, and they were likely to discontinue that size altogether.
I explained to him that a) It would have been nice if they had told me on Friday, when they shipped the shirts, instead of me having to call them, two days before a convention, where I had already promised this shirt to someone.
Their response "Overages/underages of 5%-10% are common in the industry. You're lucky we caught it at all, and credited you."
My response "So when do I get the 2 4X shirts"
Their response "You don't, we won't put the press back up for 2 shirts. We do minimum orders of 6"
My response: "Okay, what if I order 4 more shorts, 4 XL and 2 4X to make six?"
Their response: "I'm sorry we can't do that for you now, we'd treat it as a new order and you'd have to pay the screening fees."
My response: "So where do we go from here."
Their response: "What do you mean?"
Then the tirade happened. I explained to them it would have been nice if they had told me last Friday, before they shipped the shirts, that they were short 2 so I could either cancel the order (they muttered something about order cancellation policies, and penalties) or made provisions to get the shirts somewhere else.
I explained to them that they clearly had made a mistake, and while I understood that it would cost them money, part of the 'business of doing business" is that you tend to lose money when you screw up an order. Good business practice is to keep the customer happy, and lose a bit of money.
They disagreed.
I explained to them that a bad reputation would be a bad thing.
They didn't understand.
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