Any luck with customized photo items on the web?

I keep wanting to buy custom items on the web, and get burned.
Anybody have this intriguing idea work out for them?

A photo tee shirt came back so washed out it was pathetic, and not quite level, and the picture was an 8-1/2 x 11 box, which looked really homemade.

A photo mug from Yahoo didn’t look like their ad, with the photo on one side, but with the photo on the opposite end from the handle. No commercial mug is like that.

A photo composite of my brother’s face on a famous magazine was billed as looking like the real thing, but came back the wrong size and with so much computer zigzag edges you could see it was fake from accross the room.