I was planning on ordering a set of Mavic 33s laced to formulas from a lBS but I have read a lot of good things about IRO dark matter wheels. Obviously a huge price difference. Is it worth it to spend the extra $$ on mavics? Will there be any appreciable difference in performance. Any thouhg/opinions/experience would be appreciates

psh, just get the mavic cxp22 / formulas from greatdealsonbikes.com

they're pretty solid wheels and they're only $150 with shipping!

I am leary of ordering wheels online to be shipped in light of my experience with my deep Vs that I ordered from an online dealer last year that had to be trued 3 times in the first 2 months.

Your LBS will be ordering them from a catalog. Same difference.
The need for truing comes with any wheel that's not hand-built (the ones your LBS orders for you won't be hand-built either). Most often, the spokes are not tight enough. It's always a good idea to tighten your spokes as soon as you get new wheels, or take them to the LBS and have them make sure the spoke tension is ok.

Umm--actually my lbs was NOT going to be ordering them "in a box." LBS handbuilds the wheels after ordering rims and hubs.

Multiple posters with wheel building experienec(including myself) have checked the tension of these wheels with unanimously perfect results. This is better then you can expect from most LBSes so the only downside is the lack of free truing.

are the mavic 22s comparable to the rims iro uses?

I remember a thread where the IRO Dark Matter wheelset was brought up. Apparently, Tony sent the same wheeset out to different people in the course of a few months. I believe BabyChris was one of the testers and everyone said they were very good. They each rode them for about a month or so.

That's something to think about.

Also what Dutret said should be considered.

I mean, I obviously like the $150 pricetag, but if the quality of the Dark Matter wheels justifies the extra cost, then I am more than happy to send some business to IRO.

The IRO wheels will not be better than the aforementioned CXP22/formula sets. I'm one of the people who has looked over multiple sets of them and as far as I know the only one who has put a set on a Rolf press. They're as good as any wheel is ever going to be short of being custom built. I don't know who is actually doing the IRO rims but I'm guessing Velocity since they had a good relationship before. Velocity vs. Mavic is a religious debate (FWIW I'm Velocity for bang for buck, Mavic for overall quality), but for a non-eyelet semi-aero rim they're going to be about the same. The IRO's could be just as good, and Tony is awesome, but so are these guys down in Miami.