Are T-Shirt Communities A Rip-Off?
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Design By Humans, T-Shirt Designers, Teextile, Threadless, cafepress, crowdsourcing, spreadshirt, t-shirt communitiesI love t-shirts, that should be pretty much apparent to anyone who reads this blog, and I alongside a vast majority of fans of t-shirt arts was excited by the development of Threadless and other t-shirt communities out there across the world. But, and it’s a big but, as with almost all business sectors, there’s good practice, bad practice, and quite a wide range in between. Now, I know how it feels to be ripped off, we have all, in our lives from time to time, experienced a “poor deal” at the very least, and sometimes downright theft. There are charlatans across the globe, pervading all kinds of product and service based industries, who’s sole intention is to grab your money and run. Fortunately the vast majority of companies realise that without long term customer loyalty there’s little chance of them going on a “rip off” rampage and getting away with it, not including those that have almost sole or shared monopoly of a retail sector, banking being a good example of bad practice.
As with the rest of the business world, the t-shirt sector has its “bad apples”, one of the first to come to my attention following an initially positive review here at Buy Tees was Teextile.com. They still remain the worst offenders in poor if not non-existent customer service, sending out t-shirts late, sometimes never at all, and even neglecting to pay their designers. Today I received another comment at my post Teextile – A Rip Off? which highlights all the crimes and misdemeanours of this relatively young venture into the world of t-shirt crowdsourcing. Here’s what the designer Warren Hart had to say on the matter:
“I let them use one of my designs ( SLF ryu shirt ) (http://www.fourninjas.com/shop/product/1006828) to sell in January of 2010. They have yet to pay me a dime for the amount of shirts they sold. In total they owe me about $300. For months I’ve asked and asked for my money and nothing. Just one sob story after another. They were quite rude to me as well. Now they don’t even respond. P.S. Tanga.com have ripped off my design as well.“
A few days ago I also received a comment from a reader complaining about the French t-shirt community site Wordans.com:
“Wordans has very poor business skills! I ordered shirts for a festival I was attending, their web-site claimed it would take 5-10 days and it took my shirts over 16 business days to reach me. When I cancelled my order they said they would not give my money back and I should have put a rush on my order even though I ordered with more than sufficient time!“
Now, despite the awful example of Teextile, perhaps the most crooked and conceited t-shirt community on record (read these comments to see why!), I might be blowing things out of proportion. Although I have a suspicion that most t-shirt buyers experiencing problems with customer service and shipping times may simply be on the receiving end of companies that are a victim of their own success. For every Threadless, Design By Humans, Cafepress and Spreadshirt out there, obversely there are dozens (if not hundreds) of failing t-shirt companies and ‘Print On Demand’ t-shirt sites, and it’s simply a matter of under-manning and underfunding. Without enough staff and a decent contingency fund there’s little most t-shirt companies, or any company for that matter, can do when demand outstrips supply.
Then again, I’d like to see a single instance of say a car designer, a commercial architect, or a governmental advisor in a quango who hasn’t received monies for their services. The truth is that certain t-shirt communities out there are getting a very bad reputation amongst designers, far worse than they will have garnered through a dissatisfied clientèle. Without design, the lifeblood of all t-shirt communities, there is no community, there are no t-shirts, no customers, no profits, absolutely zilch. It seems extremely short-sighted for any company, no matter what they sell, to cheat their own designers, do they think we are all fools?
The time is at hand, I believe, to stand up against the commercial bullies, the cheats, the crooks and the thieves in the t-shirt industry, and the best place to start is with the current worst offenders, Teextile.com.
Above is a button to include on your own blog, site, or social network page if you want to help stop this ever pervading problem. If you wish you can link to this post or http://buy-tees.net/2010/03/teextile-a-rip-off
or not, the choice is yours. I simply think it would be a good idea to make it clear that we’re not going to take this s*** off any t-shirt community again. In the UK we have something called Trading Standards that to a degree can guarantee customer rights, along with our own Statutory rights. In America the best they can offer is the Better Business Bureau which seems to be something of a voluntary organisation with little legal clout and a tendency to ignore those companies that haven’t signed up to their register. Useless.
What we really need is an independent body, funded by all the major t-shirt sites as mentioned before, i.e Threadless, DBH, Cafepress, Spreadshirt etc. This body would essentially provide a seal of approval for new and old t-shirt communities, including a ratings system that is recognised world-wide by the industry and the buying public. The ball is in their court now, who knows, if we all stand together on this it might just happen.
Teextile – A Rip Off?
I’ve received quite a few emails and comments regarding Teextile.com‘s terrible track record of snatching people’s money for nothing and I think it’s long due that I take up the gauntlet on behalf of all of those who have been let down by this company. When Teextile first approached me last year for a review everything seemed fine, I had no reason to suspect that this t-shirt community unlike many others out there would end up as the spectacular failure that they truly are. I’ve tried to play Devil’s Advocate, especially after I received a begging letter from them a few weeks ago asking me not to write this post i.e not to criticise their business practices, in order that they would have a chance at fulfilling at least a few more of their outstanding orders. The fact is they have failed to rectify anything promised in their recent email, stating that they’d realised their error, had redesigned the site as Teextile 2.0 and were busy making up for all the trouble and anger they have caused amongst those who had paid for one of their shirts.
The argument that each is only out of pocket by $7 isn’t really the point, I can understand many thinking hey $7 is hardly anything, but if that’s the case why haven’t Teextile simply refunded all those who have still not received their tees? Here’s the latest comment regarding Teextile submitted today at Buy Tees:
“I ordered 1 T-shirt 2 weeks ago and never received yet. My order # does not work on the web page so I tried emailing everyday. They have yet to answer. I did some research and saw that the last complaint on BBB was on Feb 23, 2010. With so many complaints, they need to be exposed immediately. If you’ve been ripped off…..even for $7, please take the time to file on bbb.org
Don’t bother emailing them at info@teextile.com or orders@teextile.com……you’ll get a return email “failure to send”. If that’s not fishy enough…..I don’t know what it? Teextile is really a bogus company taking our money for FREE! It’s not fair for us hard working customers.“
Buy Tees were advised to tell our readers to use the above email addresses to contact Teextile and ensure they receive their tees or at least a refund. However if it’s true that they are now blocking emails from their customers then it goes hand in hand that Teextile are trying to dodge their financial liabilities. It is their legal responsibility to refund each and every customer who hasn’t received their product. Here’s the last email I received from Teextile regarding this post…
“I urge (you) not to write a bad article regarding this. We (have) had many problems with our shop with flooding and (losing) loosing (thousands) thoundsand of dollars in merchandise. We are trying to rebuild our name and get out of all the problems that we (have) had in the past. We will prove our selves and as a tshirt community(.) (I) i would hope for your support.” It would help if they could write in English for a start!
Will one of many anonymous workers at Teextile had included a comment at one of our posts regarding their plan to rectify this total disaster of a t-shirt community. The fact is I have removed it, I don’t like being taken advantage of, I have spent weeks reading emails from their angry customers and enough is enough. I took the guy on his word, he lied. So insted I welcome all to comment at this post with their complaints, perhaps if enough do at least some sort of action maybe taken against them regarding the recovery of monies owed. If not, at least it’s a chance for people to get it off their chests. Chests that should be wearing Teextile’s t-shirts right now…
Here’s one of the first emails I received regarding Teextile’s dubious business practices from one of their disgruntled customers -
“Do you like to get gifts for Christmas? Well, I like to Give gifts. I ordered one of the t-shirts on Nov. 8 for my son for Christmas. It is now two days before Christmas and NO t-shirt. I’ve emailed and emailed but no answer to my request of “Where is my t-shirt?”…..So my card was charged November 10 and an email confirmation was sent to my email that they got my order. BUT still no t-shirt. So I finally found their phone # and called them. The man who answered said that the t-shirt company was his brothers and this was his phone #. What kind of company puts his relatives phone # on his business? What customer service, he took my name and # and said he would tell his brother I called?”.
Here’s a few comments that express just how angry people are getting now:
“The Textile folks are absolute snakes. DO NOT BUY from them. There are *plenty* of other great shirt companies out there, don’t waste your time with this “business.” Don’t take my word for it, check out the San Diego Better Business Bureau website (of which teextile is not a member, of course) and see how many complaints have been logged against them.”
“Thanks to Buy-Tees. Perhaps they’ll respond to you? One can only hope. At the end of the day $7 is not the end of the world- I just want to know that others know they’re throwing it down the drain.”
Here’s a comment on Teextile’s own homepage right now:
“So Franco, another week has passed and you STILL refuse to communicate on the refund my order, which was placed in SEPTEMBER. You have all the information you need to do a Western Union money transfer, which you can do online in very few minutes. Yet you refuse to provide basic customer service to someone who has bought several shirts from you previously. This is UNACCEPTABLE for an online store to conduct business this way. Send my my refund. To the design on this page, I encourage you to not allow the owner of this site steal more money from people through your art, please consider taking your designs down. A business is not judged by if they get some things right, it’s how they act when something goes wrong.”
It’s sad to admit it but Teextile have despite their protests stolen money from many of their customers. If there’s a will there’s a way, I think the best option right now as suggested by a few of the above is to contact the Better Business Bureau. The problem is that unless hundreds come forward I doubt much action can be taken. However at least we can assure that Teextile doesn’t continue to fleece pockets of unsuspecting customers by spreading the word. To help those who have been ripped off by Teextile please consider mentioning this post at Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Stumbleupon, your own blogs, anywhere that might further the message. There’s a list of social networking buttons beneath this post if you care to help the many Teextile have let down. The more that know about Teextile’s behaviour the less likely they will be able to continue to operate.
Teextile 2.0
WARNING: Teextile seem to be ripping off their customers and designers! Read our latest post http://buy-tees.net/2010/03/teextile-a-rip-off/
We’ve posted about Teextile t-shirt contest community a few times here at Buy Tees. For those who have been having problems with the site, just to let you know they have just relaunched with a new and improved version of the site called Teextile 2.0. This isn’t just a glossy redesign, Teextile have fundamentally changed the way they operate, here’s how: read more
Win A MacBook Pro @ Teextile!
admin T-Shirt News T-Shirts, Teextile, teextile competition, teextile contest, teextile prizes, teextile t-shirt contest, teextile.com, textileTeextile.com have opened their shop and are selling top voted t-shirts everyday of the week forever! They have some great gear on offer (already), take a look here to see the première winners and their mad designs.
If you want to order any of their tees or help promote their site then you’ll need to sign up as a user. Whilst you’re at it why not tell your friends (and even your foes) and get a chance at winning one of these 3 fantastic prizes! read more
Teextile – A New T-Shirt Community
admin T-Shirt News T-Shirt Designers, Teextile, Threadless, designers, t-shirt community, t-shirt designs, t-shirt voting, textile, vote for tees
WARNING: Teextile seem to be ripping off their customers and designers! Read our latest post http://buy-tees.net/2010/03/teextile-a-rip-off/
Teextile.com is a brand new t-shirt community site created by Franco Galvez. Even though the site has just got started there is definitely an inrush of high quality designs at Teextile, which to be honest on average takes a lot longer than mere weeks to build up, but somehow Franco has managed to create exactly the right environment to encourage the brightest and the best to his little corner of the Net.
Perhaps it’s because Franco is a desigber himself, born in Peru but im now living in San Diego this 20 year old graphic design student and professional told Buy-Tees he “started the site because to be honest its an awesome job, I’m not one for office work, dont really see myself strapping on a tie every day and going to work in a cubicle for 9 hours…”. I asked him why he’d started Teextile, he agreed that “perhaps there are too many of these type of sites already (t-shirt design voting sites such as Threadless.com) but as he states “there are so many awesome designs out there which aren’t being printed” Franco knew that the world could do with one more – and by the looks of it he’s right!
As the old saying goes, the proof is in the pudding, and there are plenty of servings to go round at Teextile, some of the tastiest shirt designs you’ll see in a long while, so come on and tuck in, because you can never have too many great tees. read more
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