Returns, resizes, and what
happens when something goes sideways.

Everything we ship is made to the same standard you would find in a quality retail store. Every piece is a one-of-one item, which is the thing that makes it worth having and the thing that makes returns genuinely complicated. A printed shirt is not a bar of soap. Once it has your design on it, there is no putting it back on the shelf for the next person.

We will also tell you plainly: sometimes sizing runs a little off, sometimes a print does not lay down quite right, and sometimes a graphic comes out a few degrees from where it should be. These things happen in production, and we would rather acknowledge them than pretend otherwise. When they happen because of our mistake, we fix it. When they happen because printing is not a perfect science, we try to find a solution that does not involve both of us paying to move a package across the country and back.

Custom orders cannot come back. If you order a shirt with your car on it, we cannot resell it, so a return serves no one. If the item is truly custom and you find you do not want it, our genuine suggestion is to find somebody who does. A car person who knows the car on the front of that shirt will want it more than you want a refund.

If what you ordered is one of our branded items with no personalisation and you genuinely dislike it, we are willing to talk, though we will be straightforward with you about shipping costs: they tend to make returns feel like a worse deal than keeping the thing and finding it a good home.

Getting a size wrong is the most common and most fixable problem in this business. If something arrives and it does not fit, here is what we do instead of shipping it back and forth. We find a person to give that item to, usually through our community, and we send you the right size. In return, we ask you to take a picture wearing the new one and share it. That is it. No return label, no restocking fee, no holding the line.

This works because the item finds someone who wants it, you get what you ordered, and the whole thing costs less in shipping than a traditional exchange would. We think it is a better deal all round, and we have found that most people agree once they see how it works.

We make mistakes. We will send you the wrong item, or a damaged one, or something that clearly did not pass any reasonable quality check before it went in the box. When that happens, we issue a full refund or send a replacement, your choice, no questions asked. You do not need to document the entire incident or file a claim. Tell us what happened and we will sort it.

We are a community business, not a return-processing operation. Our preference is always to find something creative that leaves everyone better off than a refund would. We have sent store credit, donated items on a customer's behalf, upgraded a future order, and occasionally just had an interesting conversation that ended with both sides feeling fine about the situation.

If you have an idea for how to resolve something, bring it to us. We are genuinely open to bartering. We hope the volume of situations that need resolving stays low, because that means the products are good, but we also know they will not always be perfect, and we would rather meet that honestly than hide it in small print.

Write to us at returns@autodyssey.com and a real person will read it and reply.