Review: Zazzle.com

For a long time now I wanted to get one of those t-shirts that said "Drill Baby Drill" or "Drill Here Now" and stuff like that. The Society of Petroleum Engineers chapter in my university had a couple of these t-shirts, but whenever I went to get one I didn't find my size. So last week it occurred to me to customize my own "Drill Baby Drill" t-shirt!

I searched on the web for similar t-shirts and said maybe I will find them online. Google landed me on Zazzle.com which I never heard of before. I then got to know that Zazzle.com is a website where you can customize t-shirts, mugs, posters, and many other things. They already had customized t-shirts saying "Drill Baby Drill" on the front as you see above, but then I decided to modify the t-shirt and put a picture of an oil field on the back of the t-shirt. I provided them with a large resolution picture of the infamous Lost Hills Oil Field in California as you see below, and also I decided to review my whole experience with Zazzle.com.

At first I was hesitant to order the t-shirt because I thought I didn't have enough time to receive it. I ordered the t-shirt last weekend and on the day I ordered it, I had exactly one week until I leave the country for my summer vacation, so I was a bit worried that I wouldn't receive it before I leave, or else it would just get lost in the mail and I would never get it. The website said that it takes only 24 hours to manufacture the product. And usually it takes 2 - 3 days maximum for me to receive stuff when I order them online, so I decided to take the risk and order the t-shirt even though I had only 5 business days in total. I ordered the t-shirt on Saturday night, and I thought they wouldn't process it until Monday since I ordered it in the weekend, but to my surprise, as soon as I placed my order, it was processed and sent to production. I could track the whole thing through their website, which was really cool, and then when they shipped it, they gave me the tracking number for the shipment to track it with UPS.

It didn't take exactly 24 hours for them to manufacture the product. Well, if we don't count Saturday & Sunday, it did indeed take 24 hours, or maybe less. So I was quite satisfied with how fast they processes my order, and then the time it took to get delivered to my door is out of their hand anyways.

After knowing about Zazzle.com, there were two things I wanted to know about them that I couldn't find in the reviews I read about them online. So, I want to cover these two things here in my review. The first thing is the time it takes to manufacture the product, which I already talked about above and I'm quite satisfied with. The second thing is the quality of the product, which I'm going to cover below.

To my surprise, the quality of the t-shirt is beyond my expectation. I thought the t-shirt would be one of those cheap crappy t-shirts you get from companies and businesses as commercials, but I was wrong. The t-shirt alone cost me about $18.00, and I had to add $3.00 over that for the picture I wanted to be on the back of the t-shirt. So I was thinking this t-shirt better be of good quality and worth the $18.00. It is indeed worth the $18.00. Also, some of you might think why didn't I just take a picture to the nearest photo shop and let them print it on a white t-shirt. The answer to that is that these people do it differently. If I had a local photo shop do this thing for me, the picture would have worn out the very first time I wash & iron the t-shirt. But with the way Zazzle.com did this, I can wash and iron the t-shirt normally and nothing would happen to the quality of the picture.

Anyways, I feel that this post is getting too long so I need to stop here. In general, I just want to say that I was very satisfied with my experience with Zazzle.com. When I come back from my vacation, I might order some other cool stuff from them.

P.S.: Too bad the t-shirt cannot be worn from both sides, hehe...