The new shirts are back on sale! Here's what happened.

First off, I wanted to point out that the shirts have returned to sale. There's more information about that later in this post but if you just want to buy some, feel free! Also we launched our first Bumper Sticker bundle today as well! Get you some.

But first, here's a little post-mortem for what happened with all those misprinted shirts!

Up until recently, we hadn’t launched a shirt in around a year and a half, with the Future Bomb shirt coming out in late 2020, if I recall correctly. Our printer at the time was only producing shirts via a process called Direct to Garment (DTG), but since the last time we launched a shirt, they had also started producing shirts via a process called Direct to Film (DTF, ha ha). I personally don’t have any experience with DTF printing aside from the recent screwup, but I’m gathering that it’s a somewhat more versatile form of printing if you want to throw stuff on a variety of fabrics, but I’m guessing it works best for simple and smaller designs.

The samples that we received from the printer were DTG and that is what we approved, but somehow when the orders started rolling in, the printer for some reason decided to print everything as DTF, leading to all of the quality issues that we’ve seen with these shirts. While we are generally DTF here at Giant Bomb, it’s definitely not a good choice for our shirts, but all future orders should be of a similar quality to the shirts we’ve done in the past.

If you were affected by this first wave of printing errors, you should have received an email from our store partners at Social Imprints indicating that they will be sending you replacements at no further cost to you. If you haven’t received that email yet, please reach out to them at support@giantbombstores.zendesk.com with your order number and they can process those shirts for you. Sorry for all the hassle. If they don't get back to you promptly, please email me at support@giantbomb.com and we'll get you sorted.

NOTE THAT TALL SIZE SHIRTS WILL STILL BE GILDAN BRAND!The regular-size shirts here are going to be Next Level quality, of a similar quality and feel to pretty much all the print-on-demand shirts we’ve done over the last half-decade. All Tall sizes are Gildan brand; they’re going to be a bit thicker and have a coarser feel than the normal-size shirts. We’re working on finding some better quality shirts for the T sizes but that is ongoing.

If you missed the first run of orders (lucky you!) the shirts are now available again for purchase again over here: https://store.giantbomb.com/collections/print-on-demand

Don’t forget that the Giant Bomb Temple shirt is EXCLUSIVELY available to Giant Bomb Premium subscribers! If you do not see it in the store please use your Giant Bomb email address and create an account for the store here. Once you are logged into the store the Temple Shirt should be visible in the POD section of the site here.

If you are a Giant Bomb Premium subscriber, you can get 10% off your entire order (pre-shipping) with the code GiantBomb10Percent at checkout. You’ll need to be using the same email address as the one tied to your Premium account to ensure that this discount works! If there are any issues with this, email me at support@giantbomb.com!

If you have an existing and unused $15 off store code from a previous Giant Bomb Yearly Premium subscription, please place your order with the GiantBomb10Percent code and then email your store code and order number to support@giantbomb.com and I’ll get you hooked up with a refund; please allow a day or two for me to get back to you. Shopify is rolling out the ability to apply multiple discounts to an order sometime soon and we’re hoping this step will not be necessary when they do; apologies for the trouble! If you have any issues at all with ordering, please do email me at the support email address and I’ll try to get back to you as soon as I can.

Unfortunately women’s sizes are not available for these shirts as of right this minute! Apologies, but the samples we received did not have the correct size of the front logo and I don’t want to sell any shirts that might be misprinted. More samples of the women’s sizes are on the way and we should be able to flip the switch on women’s sizes later this week or early next, I hope. I apologize for the trouble!

Also as these are POD the limitations on shipping out of the U.S. are unfortunately applied but I'm working with our store team to enable shipping to elsewhere in the world and will try to update you all when I find out more.

Thanks for all your patience with this whole mess!

Thank YOU for the prompt communication, for making good, and for explaining the ordeal!

@mrsmiley: Seconded

I was interested in the shirts when they launched but it seems like it was wise to wait. The shirt business seems crazy from everything I’ve gathered from giant bomb’s experiences over the years. Something you’d assume would be easier than it apparently is.

International shipping *still* isn't available??

@jstaunton: It's a little more complicated than it appears but we're hoping to have it live sometime early next week.

F DTF, apparently.

Has anyone received their replacement shirts yet? I got the email on the 15th saying a replacement was being sent but nothing since then.

@tomydingo: I never even got the email...Rorie is looking into it for me still, but this could be an issue of volume? Zero idea though.

Did anyone not receive the original order? I ordered 3 shirts when the new wave launched, got an apology email over the misprints... but I never got the original shirts, my order never updated to shipping or anything like that...

At this point I kinda just want to cancel my order 😣

@tomydingo: Let me ping our store people and see what the holdup is.

@dareitus:Hey reach out to me at support at giantbomb.com and I can look into this for you!

same thing happened to me , i contacted support wondering whats up with my order at this point last friday and still heard nothing back other than that it'll be replaced with a 'good one' and i still don't have that either , i'm assuming @rorie and co might be bogged down with emails?

Separate support for the site proper and the store (store one is staffed by third party store partner)

GB answered me in less than a day and told me to email the store partner. Store partner automated email said "we will reply in 2 business days" last Friday and I haven't heard back.

I'm just trying to figure out who I'm supposed to contact at this point if I never received the initial email I was supposed to receive. Just kind of here twisting in the wind. Feels like after all of this it might be worth it for GB to cut this particular store partner loose? I have yet to hear about a good experience with them yet, and I still feel like the entire thing was kicked off by some shady bullshit by the shirt printer.

@sethmode: @dareitus: @styx971: Hey just so you know, there have been a lot of communication issues here with our store partners. They've contracted out the printing of these shirts to another company which has screwed everything up and also seems to be pretty bad about getting back to our store partners about what precisely is going on. The whole process has been immensely frustrating to deal with simply because I don't have any direct knowledge of what the actual issue is; I have to wait for the printer to get back to our store partner and for them to get back to me so it's been quite the game of telephone.

That said, the last I heard from our store partners was that "the printer have worked through their QC & printing issues, I feel confident that we are good to go." and "All orders will go out in the week." That information is fresh as of Tuesday so I am hoping (if not exactly expecting) that all of the original mis-printed orders will have replacements shipped out later this week or early next, with everyone who placed orders after we re-opened orders in mid-August will be receiving their orders shortly after. That, at least, is what I'm being told as of now.

Sethmode, if you never received the original email please email support@giantbombstores.zendesk.com and definitely let me know at the support @giantbomb.com address if they don't get back to you promptly. They're managing the main email list to reach out to everyone affected so I'm curious as to why they never emailed you in the first place, but they should be responsible for that.

Sorry about all this mess; it's been tremendously frustrating trying to get real answers as to what is going on but we have escalated to basically the top level of our store partners to try and get everything sorted so I'm hopeful that there's an end in sight. I'm trying to confirm everything and make sure that our store partners can email everyone with an update soon.

@rorie: thanks for the info rorie

I finally got a response from Social Imprints yesterday and they said:

Thank you for reaching out! We are still working on reprints. You should expect a full replacement order within the next 2 weeks.

We sincerely apologize for this delay and are working diligently to get your order out.

Thank you for your patience.

thanks for the info @rorie and @tomydingo

I don't really mind a delay as long as I get em lol

@rorie: Thanks for the update rorie...definitely hope none of my terseness comes off as directed at you. I get it.

Hey, no worries! As I was trying to say on my stream yesterday this whole thing is not my fault, really, but it's definitely my responsibility. Hopefully we're close to a resolution for everyone.

@rorie:

Hey Rorie,

Was there any update to the international shipping status?

We are trying to get the corrected shirts out the door first to the people who have already ordered. Once those arrive and look clear, we'll try to open up international shipping - this will probably be a "pre-order" thing where you'll have a couple of weeks to make an order so we don't overprint too much.

I'm fingers-crossedly still hoping the reprints go out this week although our shipping partner is being pretty cagey about the timeline. Hopefully it all goes smoothly.

@rorie: awesome stuff. Looking forward to it. Thanks Rorie!

@rorie: I'm watching and waiting Rorie, I'm waiting and watching.

Let me buy the shirts.

I'm constantly shaking peoples tables yelling "let me buy the shirts", it's becoming a problem and only you can fix this Rorie.

still waiting on mine to ship out .. i know its not you guys' fault but this was definitely the biggest bungle i've seen when it comes to a shirt :/ last email i got said it should ship within 2 weeks and 3 more days till that 2 week window has closed...its pretty annoying at this point honestly.

Yep, it's been as bad of a fuckup of our store partners as I have ever seen in almost ten years of doing this stuff. I'm constantly baffled at how a printer can just...forget how to make a shirt, and then somehow keep forgetting the process for a month and a half. I've been told as many different things as you all have been in terms of the timeline for fixing this mess and it's been pretty exhausting. I can only apologize again and hope that the latest update I have regarding re-shipments is accurate:

Reprints have been submitted and are scheduled to ship out this week and next.

And as we speak:

I just received word from Scalable press that thereprint orders have partially shipped. They are still working on completing the orders in full but once I receive status that all shirts have been processed and shipped I will inform you.

I will continue to monitor any zendesk tickets that trickle in from individuals who have yet to receive their orders or who received misprints and not email.

forgetting to print them! thats crazy ... talk about bad business ... sorry you have to go through that side of things . it sucks for us but even moreso it has to be such a headache on that end

@rorie: So I just got a shirt in. I ordered 3 but there's only one in the bag with no other information.

As for the shirt itself... Did the misprints have smaller graphics on them? I can't tell if this shirt I got is the misprint from before or if this is supposed to be the actual shirt but it doesn't really look as advertised with the art kind small for the face of the shirt.

I can email pictures over to you, can't figure out how to attach them here.

Yes, please email those pictures to me at support@giantbomb.com and I can pass them along to our store partners to make sure you get the correct replacements! Sorry for the hassle.

Got my replacement shirt today and everything is perfect! Correct graphic size and centered. Thank you Rorie for taking care of all this stuff!

Unfortunately I had a similar experience. Ordered the temple shirt, got the low quality one, got the replacement today and it's the yarn shirt.

Okay so turns out I did get shipped a misprint a while back, they just typo'd my address and it wound up in my neighbors box and he didn't notice until now. So I got a misprint and a reprint of the "Guilty" Luchadeer shirt (the reprint is fine) but I'm missing two other shirts (Yarn and Temple). Rorie and Social Imprints have both been in touch in private and it's getting resolved but definitely a bummer considering most the other things I've ordered from GB have gone super smooth.

@rorie i finally got A shirt today even tho my order says unfulfilled still but i think its a misprint i'm pretty sure . the outline is grey not white like in photo ( tho the camera makes it glow as if it does when you try to take a picture.) the image also seems smaller than i expected but i'm not sure if its cause the shirt size? seems a bit weird tho. so i'm really not sure whats going on if this is supose to be the good 1 after all this time n the order just never updated or if they're so behind that i finally got the misprint i'd never received and i'm still waiting on the order since the store site does still say 'Unfulfilled' in the order status

@styx971: via an email from Rorie we are going to be getting reprint/refund options via email sometime this coming week. Your shirt is a misprint as someone who has gotten some of each.

I just got my third package, this time addressed to a different neighbor and it's a misprint. So so far I've had one Reprint "Guilty" shirt sent to me, while one neighbor was sent a misprint "Guilty" and a completely different neighbor was sent my misprint "Temple" shirt. No idea where my missing misprint "Yarn" shirt is or the other two reprints but I'm thinking I should go down the block and ask the rest of my neighbors.

@dareitus: damn thats rough ... also you need better delivery ppl , here i thought mine were bad. but yeah i went on twitter post after looking around altho i wish they would have made an in site update about it vs having to see on twitter. seems kinda silly to have a website with both articles and forums n not to post it on here somewhere first. is what it is tho. its a shame cause my sub will have lapsed by the time they straighten out their printer partner issues and with next to no incentive other than possible 'special shirts' mainly i can't justify the premium price tag after this specially after feeling burnt by the past yr+ or so , tho i will say i think the site has gotten alot output since dan returned and grubb joined ( lucy n tam are great too), but thats a post ment elsewhere .....

TLDR: seen on twitter , should have posted in site , honestly tho thank you for replying to me on here in case i hadn't seen it :)