Customer Complaining About T-Shirts Falling Apart - Never Seen Damage Like This!

[Maxie]

I've seen the one at the bottom of the shirt before.
Person is leaning against a table while they are working and the constant rubbing against the table causes these holes.
Top pix looks like a rat ate it.

[Maxie]

I've seen the one at the bottom of the shirt before.
Person is leaning against a table while they are working and the constant rubbing against the table causes these holes.
Top pix looks like a rat ate it.

[nascarstan]

I have seen shirts dry rot that have sat around for a long time but I would go with what most others are saying.
Looks like a chemical ate at the shirts.

[Prince Art]

All of the above = totally reasonably & likely. But if you want to verify from another angle, tell us the brand & style of the shirt. Presumably you're using a standard tee that doesn't do this for any of your other customers, not for any of ours. (Something we can confirm for you.) That fact (assuming it's true) is something I'd bring up to the customer, politely, when suggesting user error/environmental causes.

[244]

Hello there! New member reaching out for help!

Over the last few months, the company that I work for has printed t-shirts, longsleeve shirts and hoodies for a local restaurant. Today, the restaurant called in to complain about the shirts falling apart. I had them take some pictures to see if there was some kind of obvious manufacturing issue. However, after getting the pictures back, I can comfortably say that I've never seen damage like this before. The bottom of the one shirt looks like it was chewed up!!

Have any of you seen damage like this? If so, any ideas as to the cause? Is there a chance that this is a manufacturing issue, or is it almost 100% user error?

Thanks for any help you can provide!!

This looks like you are overheating a dyed shirt that the dye was sulfur based. When this type of dye is overheated the shirt will pull apart like paper. I am pretty sure that is your problem.

[Underbase37]

Other possible things to consider.
I have seen lint drop onto a shirt while under the flash or in the dryer and burn up causing it to burn a little hole like the top pic. Does your equipment maybe need cleaning?
Also I have seen a shirt break down like the bottom pic, if the shirt has been blown out with ink removel cems and maybe a bit to forceful of a spray, causing the fibers to weaken.
 What Rich said sounds like a very possible culprit.
That all said if nothing else seems likely it's probably end use issues as listed above.

Murphy

[mooseman]

Take yourself out of the picture so to speak. Give your customers a handful of blank shirts same brand and color and ask that tey wear them for a month then review.
This removes all of your printing process other than ordering and unboxing

I have no idea what is going on here except when I was a young ladd I worked on a bunch of cars.
My shirts always ended up just like you see in your photos. the bad actor was the dried up caked on battery gunk on the terminals of the then refillable batteries. All was fine as I leaned over the dried up gunk and brushed it off my shirt. When  the shirt hit the wash everything changed.....and there they were acid burn holes, exactly like you have there, isolated , localized and no evidence of stains or other stuff...just holes.
I would look at the operation to see if they are using things like cleaning / disinfecting products.
Here is a quick Google search for restaurant cleaning chemicals , I'll bet there are some fabric foes in some of this stuff.
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=restaurant+kitchen+cleaning+chemicals

Think of this the dehaze products we use on screens contains caustic soda it will damage fabric. It is also used in some food prep services as a cleaner .

No doubt in my mind this is sourced at the customer simply based on what I see and remember from my own experience and more so the isolated areas of the damage. Ask the customer does this happen on the back of the shirts? Most likely not because that side of the shirt is away from whatever process that is the cause of this failure.
mooseman

[244]

Take yourself out of the picture so to speak. Give your customers a handful of blank shirts same brand and color and ask that tey wear them for a month then review.
This removes all of your printing process other than ordering and unboxing

I have no idea what is going on here except when I was a young ladd I worked on a bunch of cars.
My shirts always ended up just like you see in your photos. the bad actor was the dried up caked on battery gunk on the terminals of the then refillable batteries. All was fine as I leaned over the dried up gunk and brushed it off my shirt. When  the shirt hit the wash everything changed.....and there they were acid burn holes, exactly like you have there, isolated , localized and no evidence of stains or other stuff...just holes.
I would look at the operation to see if they are using things like cleaning / disinfecting products.
Here is a quick Google search for restaurant cleaning chemicals , I'll bet there are some fabric foes in some of this stuff.
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=restaurant+kitchen+cleaning+chemicals

Think of this the dehaze products we use on screens contains caustic soda it will damage fabric. It is also used in some food prep services as a cleaner .

No doubt in my mind this is sourced at the customer simply based on what I see and remember from my own experience and more so the isolated areas of the damage. Ask the customer does this happen on the back of the shirts? Most likely not because that side of the shirt is away from whatever process that is the cause of this failure.
mooseman

We ran shirts 6 years ago at a show in England. The shirts provided by the vendor were from two different countries but the same brand, model, and color. The ones from one country worked perfectly fine and the other ones looked exactly like the ones pictured here. They were overheated through our dryer as we were melting a clear over a metallic print to make the print look like it had metal on it. The excessive heat caused the sulfur dyed shirts to fall apart and if you pulled on them hard enough they would rip  in your hands. The others ran the exactly same way were perfectly fine. I am 99% sure this is the case here from what I see.

[Inkworks]

Looks like my shirts from carrying around the leaky old car battery for my trolling motor when fishing.