Fuel: Print on Demand , 279 reviews

FUEL failed to meet our high professional standards and is no longer our exclusive vendor for Fitted Crew T-shirts, 50/50 Hoodies, and 15 oz Mugs. This POD vendor is not worth the effort for the following verifiable reasons:

Their quality control department has been found lacking, their support team inept, and their app full of fatal flaws that will make your business fail. I do not recommend FUEL as a business partner in the POD market.

1) T-Shirts and Hoodies were far too often shipped with misprints, wrong prints, missing prints, wrong product blanks, and wrong product sizes. Customers would get the wrong size print other than what was mocked up. 13" large on the back would be printed 11.5" instead to save ink. Wrong print on the back with the correct print on the front. Inconsistency in specific print location as per the mockup generator. Gildan blanks swapped out for Jerzees blanks without communication or permission or a refund for the difference in blank price. Mugs arrived broken as they were missing protective packaging or were shipped using inferior packaging materials.

2) Fuel would print shipping labels within two days, but production would occur 5-7 days after the order was marked fulfilled - when contacting the shipping agent, USPS/UPS would state they did not have the package in their possession. Fuel also never allowed for size changes when a customer ordered the wrong size as they've already printed the shipping label. Orders couldn't be canceled or changed as a result.

3) Their mockup generator would have color selections for products they did not have in stock or keep stock on. Production times would become up to 12 business days on certain colors and sizes as they waited for blanks to arrive. They would print a shipping label to maintain their production time claim even though their facility still wouldn't have any blanks in stock at any of their printing facilities.

3) Fuel support staff would only politely respond with auto-generated replies - "I'm sorry...." They often ignored requests or questions and I'd have to ask again when looking for order updates on messed up orders or orders that had too long of a production time.

These things happened far too many times and at my expense. My profit margins verifiably decreased 30% after switching to FUEL.

The only thing about doing business with them was their low prices - of which they sneakily increased their shipping fees to increase their profit during COVID-19. They have two packages sent instead of one when customers ordered a T-shirt & a Hoodie combo and claim they were produced at different facilities. (not good for the environment or for our budget). When asked to disclose their facility location as proof, they ignored all requests. I do not believe their print facilities are located in the continental United States as result.

For all of these verifiable reasons, I'm cutting my loss and moving on to a new POD vendor to further grow my graphic design business.

Great app for apparel. Very competitive price and A+ customer service support. Creating products on shopify can be improved slightly especially when you want to go back and edit an existing listing. Besides that, I'd recommend this to anyone getting started with POD!

Avoid at any cost. Read and don't dismiss these comments. Worst POD vendor I've used. Poor mgmnt. Incapable of processing orders in the order they receive them. Orders frequently get "stuck" in their system or so Max says. They don't care appear to care about small companies. They likely process orders from their bigger clients first. They perform maintenance without warning and then cause massive shipping delays. Shopify should be ashamed for allowing this app on their platform. Take your money elsewhere. Lot's of POD apps out there and Fuel shouldn't be on your list of options. Shopify clearly doesn't vet the vendors providing services on their platform or this company wouldn't be allowed on it.

**UPDATE** After over a month waiting to be fulfilled, I requested a cancellation and refund for several orders, only to be ignored. I had to refund the customer. Now it has been shipped. If they follow their previous actions, they will eventually respond to the email to say "Sorry, it's been shipped now".
Fulfillment times are hit and miss. I understand that due to COVID 19, many POD are experiencing longer than normal processing times. However, my issue with this company is quality, consistency and customer service. Orders placed almost 3 weeks ago will still be "in production", but orders for the exact same shirt and size placed later than that will ship first.
I have written into customer service regarding several issues such as: several wrong shirts being sent, design on shirt being off center and crooked. Also, a customer sent in a photo showing how bad the shirt looked after just one wash. Customer service will not respond AT ALL after weeks. I have ordered sample shirts myself. The first samples were fine. The second sample was just plain black text on a shirt and almost completely washed off after one wash. It's one thing to have long fulfillment times, but when the customer finally gets their order and it's bad quality or completely wrong and they do nothing about it... that's the problem. Absolutely would not recommend.

We have used every app listed and finally, finally! A team that has great pricing, awesome app, and even better support. Max has been great to work with on any questions we have. If your looking for a partner and not just an app I highly recommend the Fuel POD, hand down.

So far I like their products a lot. I had some issues with the quality of the heat press transfer and they said they would send out replacements. Right now though the shipping time is extremely delayed. Currently I have 2 orders in placed May 11th and they are still unfulfilled and it's May 29th (13 business days). So be aware of that. I'm hoping things turn around though.

Every shirt/ sweater/ hat all came out absolutely perfect. We have unique colors for our brand and they were spot on with our Hue

The customer service is terrible. They will NOT ship your item within the timeline set on the website. You will have a angry customers. It's not worth the $3 cheaper prices. What a damn nightmare. Customer service was god awful, after I saw that my order didn't ship in 10 days, I asked for a refund. They told me we can refund the shipping fee. So they suggested never sending my order and refunding $5. Amazing. I wish that receive the same level of customer service that they provide. Thank God for credit card dispute process.

You lost my business. Shame on you for deceiving your customers. We all count on you and you have failed to deliver.

Pros: Excellent for the price. Cheapest American Apparel POD I have found. Shipping and processing are quick despite COVID. Very happy with the print quality.
Cons: App can be glitchy. The art placement is automatically centered which is great the 99% of times you need that, but there is not way to override it when things need to be placed in a speciffic spot. Customer service can range from right away (often) to waiting for hours (not as often, but I have waited hours during their customer service hours).
Overall, I say the company is worth working with. They are new and will probably get better with time. I just hope they can keep up their quick speed and quality prints as more people switch to them.