When things go wrong

Something will go wrong on a Tuesday

You will do everything right and a shirt will still arrive two weeks late, or arrive printed crooked, or not arrive at all. Print on demand means a factory you do not supervise, a postal service you do not control, and buyers who judge only you. The failure rate is low, but across hundreds of orders it is a certainty. Your response playbook decides whether an incident costs you eight dollars or costs you the shop's reputation.

The four usual failures

The package vanished. Tracking stops moving or never starts. This is the most common issue and the least your fault. Refund or reship immediately; the goodwill of speed matters more than the cost.

The print is wrong. Crooked placement, wrong color, faded lines. Ask for a photo, then decide. Production partners have problem-report systems: Printful, for example, refunds or reprints misprinted, damaged, or defective items at their cost, no return needed. Use these systems; mistakes are part of what the base price pays for.

The size disappointed. Buyers guess sizes and blame the shirt. This is why a size chart image belongs in every listing. When a wrong-size request arrives, offer an exchange and eat the cost if the buyer is civil. It is inventory you never bought; treat it as a marketing expense.

The buyer is angry about shipping time. Usually a Q4 problem. Your processing-time policy setting, covered in Selling on Etsy, is your shield here: if you stated the partner's real handling time honestly, the remedy is an apology plus a fast refund, and the review lands softer.

The decision and the templates

The economics make the decision easy. Refunding a $25 sale costs you the base cost and shipping, roughly $12, because the customer keeps or discards the item and you refund the full price. Against that stands the review math from Selling on Etsy: on Etsy, a review attaches to your whole shop and sits on every listing. A single heated one-star review costs more than a year of refunds.

So the operator rule is: refund fast, refund fully, do not argue. If the buyer asks for a refund, give the refund. If they describe a defect, offer the replacement first. Never fight a buyer over an amount smaller than your hourly value, and every one of these amounts is.

Two templates, kept short and honest:

So sorry about this. I've refunded the full amount, it should reach your card in a few days. The shirt is yours, no return needed. If you'd like a replacement instead, reply here and I'll ship one today.

Thanks for the photo, that's not how this should have printed. I've already ordered a replacement, tracking will post within a day. No need to return the original.

Both do the same three things: own it, fix it, remove the buyer's work. Nothing about policies, nothing defensive.

The review you cannot fix

Occasionally a one-star review lands anyway. Read it once, reply once, professionally, for the future buyers who will read the reply rather than the review. Then move on. A shop with two hundred reviews and four angry ones reads as normal to buyers. A shop with six reviews and one angry one does not, which is another argument for catalog size.

Mistakes are survivable.