Fuel: Print on Demand

Update 06/27/2022 - Lyman reached out via email and refunded my sample order including shipping. Fuel has also sent out a couple emails regarding production issues and changes - finally. Support remains the most responsive. However while their prices are very good, I remain concerned about quality. They are also adding print facilities to help with their production; however these are third-party printers. It's great they are taking steps with reducing production times however I am apprehensive because by using a network of third-party printers the production and quality will not be consistent (based on my experience with other companies who do not do printing fully in-house).
Pros - Support is very quick to respond; Cheapest shirts and mugs (but many other providers now within 50-30 cents and getting much closer) Cons - Poor print quality; Slow, inaccurate production times; Apparently they don’t stock blanks (I was told by support that they order the blanks each time an order comes in, so 1-2 days is wasted here) Poor print quality. It’s the second worst quality of the 5 major POD providers I ordered samples from; the design was “warped” (very odd, no idea how this could happen on a flat t-shirt) and the edges of the design were double lined/blurry. They’re the slowest and most inaccurate (dishonest, in my opinion) with fulfillment times. It took 13 calendar days (9 business days) to process the sample order and ship it out. And this is when they were publishing updates that their t-shirt fulfillment times were 3-5 business days. When I contacted support for an update they said this is due to the supplier that provides the blanks (the blanks are out of stock). So apparently Fuel doesn’t stock either any or enough blanks, unlike other many other POD providers, and spend 1-2 days receiving blanks for the orders that come in. Support acknowledged their backlog/stock issue but had no plans to fix it until the holidays, so another 6 months before it’s resolved and *hopefully* doesn’t happen again. Support indicated another 1-2 business days before my sample order would ship out and it took 3. I suggested they change their production estimates to 5-8 business days for more transparency and reduce inquiries, but didn’t care to and the next day published another production update showing 3-5 business days clearly knowing this isn’t true or accurate. It'd be much more professional to state accurate times, or note that some orders may take longer due to the stock issues they're having, but they didn't seem to want to acknowledge these issues unless asked, rather than put this on that production status update page or even send an email blast out. So in total I waited 16 days for a poorly printed sample order. I'm very disappointed because I choose Fuel based on a reference from a high-volume seller and quality from that order seemed better. So quality is inconsistent. There are dozens of other POD companies and many with quicker time and/or better quality. I do not recommend Fuel.

This app is totally terrible! They never know which orders are late to handle!
Low basecost, low quality!

The only reason they're getting a 2 star is because their prices are really good and I'm hoping the test order I made comes out great as well. It's only been 2 days since I started using Fuel and the headache is present let me tell you. My first issue came from the structure of placing a test order, there isn't any clear instructions on how to do that. There is not button or section where its dedicated towards you placing these kind of orders, its all just in the same place with no detail. Fine, I got through that part but then the most annoying issue I ran into was when my Test order came back with an "error". I messaged customer service and they got back to me the next day with a link to the amount of stock they have. In other words you'll have to personally wake up and check their stock daily and then manually update your items based on the stock they show on their storage link. While you're making the actual product it does not tell you what's in stock and what's out of stock and unlike other drop shippers they 100% allow it to be LIVE and RUNNING on your website without saying a word. What their customer service suggested to me was to replace the color with something similar or another item whenever a customer ordered something that was out of stock. If you don't email them about this they don't inform you either. Again, they do have great prices so I dealt with those issues and updated my items. I thought it couldn't get any worse until today when I noticed I missed out on 4 sales and one of my customers reached out to me letting me know what the problem was. Basically any time an item from Fuel was added to the cart and they attempted to check out it would give them a shipping error telling them they couldn't ship to their area/location. I had to go through Fuel's FAQ section and finally found an answer to this problem, at least I thought I did. Fuel provided instructions on how to resolve this issue by going into my settings and adding fuel to the other shipping settings in your account. I did that but did it solve the issue, no. I also made a shipping profile for Fuel itself and did that fix the issue, no. Now I'm here waiting for a response from customer service but in the mean time I'm going to go look for another drop shipper with equivalent prices even if its a bit higher because these issues and missing out on sales isn't worth a few less bucks. Try at your own risk, Fuel has potential to be great because they do have an advantage with their prices. If they can fix these big issues so many more people would use their services permanently as a first choice, I know I would but right now it only deserves 2 stars and that's me being nice and seeing their potential.

Originally, Fuel's customer service was spot on and responded in a timely manner. However, now they don't even address your questions and simply ignore the parts they don't want to answer.I have many orders which are almost 1 month but they still do not get them out. If not, it's still in pre-shipment status. I got a lot of negative review and refund to my customer as well because of the late shipment. I canceled the application and did not receive a refund

Originally, Fuel's customer service was spot on and responded in a timely manner. However, now they don't even address your questions and simply ignore the parts they don't want to answer. I ordered samples recently and they were horrendous - the design was faded, cracked, and tiny compared to the size of the garment. They didn't even give me a full refund! The only plus is their pricing which is the cheapest I've seen anywhere. I guess you get what you pay for. There needs to be serious improvements in print consistency, quality, and customer service. I was looking forward to working with them but now I have to look elsewhere.