Gooten: Print on Demand

It really isn't difficult to hire some VA's in another country to handle your support emails. Going 2 weeks without a reply is unacceptable, and blaming COVID is not an excuse at this point. Hire someone to answer emails, you are still making sales and therefore making money.

I will simply have to switch suppliers based on this. The quality is good but not outstanding, the fulfillment times are OK because of COVID but the support is non-existant. Why is it every other POD company is managing to answer emails normally but you can't?

Edit: Replying to my review with the same copy-pasted reply for each complaint here really doesn't cut it, sorry isn't enough at this point. Do something about it, you're in a position to do so and it really illustrates your lack of leadership/management skills.

One of the worst services ever. When you contact customer service, it takes 15 days to reply if any. Packages are often lost, fake tracking codes - this company is a madness.

From now on, I'll post a 1-star review every single day of waiting for their customer service to reply.

Took a month and half to receive 2 orders and both were printed on the wrong shirt. Contacted customer service a month ago and still no response. I understand longer processing times due to COVID, but does not excuse wrong orders and bad customer service. Do not recommend.

Gooten was a nightmare! The customer service issues over the holidays were the last straw for me. Just as in any line of work, you know the holiday is coming, so be prepared for it. Gooten’s prices are very competitive, but the amount of time I have to spend due to all of the issues and not being able to provide good customer service left me no choice but to switch fulfillment companies. I made the mistake of trying them again for an international order last month – which reminded me exactly why I won’t use them!!! And prompted me to finally submit this review. I don’t see them improving, especially with condescending reps.

I do hope they can work out these problems, but I’m not sure how I would ever know if or when they get so many and such large problems sorted out. I am happy with my current fulfillment company they just cost more, but it’s worth it for things to run smoothly, so I don’t see any turning back.

1.) Quality: Gooten products are outsourced and there is no quality control like with other companies. T-shirts are taken off the printer hot, crumpled into a ball & sent to the customers that way! Sometimes the graphics stick to themselves as a result and arrive damaged. If you do not choose a SKU with an underbase, they will go ahead and print it without one and send it to the customer even though the design does not even show up on the shirt. They have a good point that some people ‘want’ a vintage look. But in my cases it was obviously not wanted for the graphic to not show up at all - the point is there is no quality control, it is as if nobody even sees the finished product or cares how it looks. Sometimes the graphics are also crooked.
2.) Shipping: The t-shirt vendor for my products only ships DHL express, so it takes customers over a week to get their orders even after the week it takes to make the shirt(s). If you ship international the order just shows in limbo forever and there is no way to track anything about it. This past month my order just sat somewhere ‘unscanned’ for several weeks with no way to know there was a problem.
3.) Platform: I had a pretty good experience with the platform until they implemented their ‘hub’ and now it is a nightmare. This happened as I was taking my Etsy business to Shopify and building a Shopify store. I had to put off launching my Shopify store for months because I either can’t get my products to stay linked or the fact that it now takes hours to build a single product with multiple variants. You can no longer use a CSV with Shopify without it unlinking all the products on Gooten’s end and having to start over linking every single SKU and graphic. It is very error-prone since you have to completely reselect every SKU and graphic without even a heading at the top as to which shirt design you are working on! Product write-ups are overridden when syncing, so you have to copy and paste those every time you make a change or add a variant. I’ve tried working with them but there is no phone number just email and it’s just too much for me to spend hours, days, weeks and months helping them fix their whole business.
4.) Mockup errors: Many shirts are mocked up with the wrong image color. I have learned that since switching fulfillment companies. So I was using the wrong graphics colors at times the whole time because I thought the mockup was the actual color of the shirt. Also it makes the customer-facing mockups misleading, as people think they are purchasing the color shown.
5.) Customer service: Customer support was the reason I stuck it out and gave them such a long time to get things right; they were great up until I had some problems around the holidays, and then some got condescending. One of my customers received a defective product, and they could not do anything at all to expedite the shirt to her…I couldn’t even pay for anything to be done. The production is outsourced, and there was nothing they could do to get the vendor to prioritize the problems. Also the vendor doesn’t offer any shipping except DHL Express, so I was stuck providing a level of customer service that is not acceptable for my business. I made the mistake of trying Gooten again this past month for an international order, and when my customer made a mistake in the address I got another condescending response (the same lady, I believe!) in a very punishing reply. I get it, someone made a mistake, just help me move forward and take care of the customer!!
6.) ‘Expedited’ inconsistency: There is a huge confusion regarding expedited processing versus expedited shipping. I pay for expedited processing every single time I place an order…it isn’t much and is supposed to bump up the processing time from 12 days to 6 days. But expedited shipping has never been an option. I would use it every time if it were! Some people at Gooten use the two terms interchangeably and even tell me that expedited processing isn’t an option…even though I pay for exactly that every single time I place an order!

I'm exhausted; which is how I usually felt back when I was using Gooten!

DO NOT USE! WORST SERVICE EVER! Will ruin your business! AWFUL CUSTOMER SERVICE!! RUINS STARTUPS!! Placed an order June 6th. "Guarantees 4th day ship." Today is June 26th. It has not even shipped. They could not manage to print a simple white Tee. After tons of emails arguing about shipping my product, they refused and issued a refund. They have the rudest customer service who want to question what to do?? You ask for your order and they act confused. This is the worst thing. Don't waste time building your company around this kind of crap. You will be sorry.

Don't bother. It is a waste of time to put effort into building your site, spending hours upon hours dedicated to adding and creating products for your business and website, only to find that the service provider cannot deliver. This is a lot of money and time down the drain.

I did find several articles comparing different services out there for this type of service. What I found was that Printful is a better option that does not require a monthly fee. However, if you do the math, Printify will in the end, give a better ROI or profit margin, even with the $29 monthly fee.

So there are options. But this place, don't even have a way to phone them, and stopped having the live chat option for customer service. So you are left with arguing with people through emails that take days and nothing gets accomplished to fix your issues. I'd suggest you try the other options first. :)

No phone available for quick Customer Service questions. Had doubled an order by accident and since it took them a day to respond via email it was too late to cancel and it cost me money. Took no responsibility and my Customer made out with (2) items. Congrats. Not sure how a company can run a business without a Customer Support Phone number. There are plenty of other POD companies out there. Choose another. Had another issue on a Image, which you can find on Products being sold on Amazon and Walmart, and the Customer agent via email was arguing with me about it being inappropriate.

I loved that app when I found it but then big issues started, items I'd created were disappearing and the customer service became non-existent. I've been waiting WEEKS for a response, I've even chased and nothing back on any channel. Impossible to work like this. I've had to abandon them and find other suppliers elsewhere. Wasted a lot of my time here.

There's hardly any customer service. They are not like the other POD services I used in the past. If you need help you probably won't get any. I am about to cancel my orders and move to another POD in the middle of it.

Have a problem with an order on a Friday? Wait until Monday for an answer. Have a problem on a Teusday wait 24 hours. This business model isn't viable without quick support, be sure to use a fulfillment app that has responsive support, not GOOTEN.

Terrible company. Shipped the wrong item completely and when I asked to get the right one they put it on hold for "copyright reasons" I did the art myself and they need (Commercial proof) so I cant just send them the art. they have already produced about 8 of these exact products for me but now they wont do it because its a reprint. I have asked for the manufacturer but gooten wont give it to me because they know they are a Piece of SH*T company that deserves to be bankrupt. and would lose all their customers because they are terrible. I have had so many problems with them. Just find another site if you can. They do not treat their customers well and DO NOT DESERVE YOUR BUSINESS. This company makes me so mad I had to share this.