Printful Quality Control
Hi, I’m gonna show y’all three examples of quality control issues that I experienced working with Printful. The purpose of this post is to give you insight as to what is and isn’t deemed a “misprint” in Printful’s eyes. Generally, there are 3 common scenarios when something goes wrong:
1. When it's Printful's fault
2. When it's my fault
3. When it's just not something that they are willing to send a new item over for
The following photos are an example of where Printful made a mistake and then corrected it once I brought it to their attention.
As you can see, you can’t. The print did a really bad job of keeping the numbers in white clean and because of that everything is blurry and renders the sample piece unusable.
Once I brought the blurry print to Printful Support’s attention they quickly replied and let me know that they will be sending me a replacement. This one is wayyy better even the colors don’t look blurry. Mind you these letters and number are tiny so the can only be so clean.
Alright so, here is an example of when the print issue was my fault:
The first thing wrong with this print is that it’s far too small and a bit off in placement. I was confused as to how this even happened because it looked nothing like this on the mock up.
I mean check out what the mock up looks like. How does that even happen?
Well this is how it happened:
Support got back to me and let me know that “…the file I chose was positioned for a 10x10 print area while this product(Kids Hoodie Size Small) is printed on 4.5x4.5 area”. That means that I used a file size that was far too big and Printful just did what they are supposed to and scaled it down to fit. That’s when I realized “Oh, I need to make sure that when I design things I scale it to the size I want to maintain throughout.”
This was a weird little process that took a minute for my brain to compute. It is something that may require it’s own post to explain however I'll try to sum it up. Basically, you shouldn't just make 1 design file for a 12x12 print area and use it for a 10x10 or 8x8. It seems like it wouldn't be a problem until you get back what I showed up there. What you should do is decide on or measure how big the subject of your design file will be in real life. If the subject is a 4x4in square while on your 12x12in art board then you need to copy over that same square into the 10x10 artboard and upload the files separately. This will maintain the same size subject when printing on garments of different sizes. I'll go through this in depth when I show ya'll how to use Printful.
Anyways, Printful Support was very helpful in walking me through my confusion and leading me to a higher understanding. Now, I properly size and scale all my designs so something like that doesn’t happen again. You gotta fail to succeed know what I mean?
Finally, this is an example of it not necessarily being either of our faults it’s just not something that they are willing to send a new item over.
When I received this sample I could immediately tell that something was slightly off. The scale was correct and the print was clean. So what about it is throwing my eye off? That’s when I got a couple of straight objects and crossed them to check how straight the design was in relation to the middle of the neck hole. As you can see it is slightly rotated to the right, like the knob on a safe. This really bothered me so I reached out to Printful to see what they might do.
Printful Support got back to me on this one too and let me know that “…the product/garment is manually placed in the machine by our team. Because of this, we allow a marginal discrepancy in the positioning of about 0.5"- 1 inch. Upon reviewing the image provided, the outcome for the garment falls within the acceptable shift range and does not currently qualify for a refund or a reshipment.”
And I mean, that makes sense. They aren’t going to be able to make it exactly perfect every time, so there has to be room for error.
I hope that this post was helpful in exposing you to common Quality Control claims with Printful. You saw all 3 examples of what might happen when its their fault, my fault, and when it’s just not a margin of error they are willing to send a replacement over. If you are a buyer or someone who also wants to start a POD business these are really helpful things to be aware of so that you can minimize mistakes and uncertainty when using or buying from Printful.
If you ever receive an item that is damaged or misprinted please send photos to info@garethgarlend.com and I will help try to get Printful to send you a replacement.
Have a wonderful day everyone!
- garth