inkFrog for eBay

The one thing we really wanted it to do can't be relied on. The synchronising could be better, to say the least; eBay sales can take several hours to sync to Shopify and sometimes don't do it all, so you can sell stock in Shopify that has already sold on eBay. And, it can be just as bad syncing to eBay; we have regularly had to cancel transactions on eBay and ruin our eBay status due to items still being listed on eBay several hours after selling out in our Shopify store.

You can report this to support, as we have done, All they will tell you is that they will pass it on to the developers, and you never hear any more from them. Had the same issue with their extra cost templates; we reported bugs several times only for support to supposedly pass it on to the developers for nothing to be done.

In our 'final straw' experience, we asked for an explanation as to why a particular item did not sync and advised them that unless they could provide this, we had no faith in their app and would stop using it. Guess what, passed to the developers and heard no more even when we chased them up to give them the opportunity to redeem themselves, we were just fobbed off. So, we weren't bluffing; we can't continue to use an app that is so unreliable in such a critical area and be met with a lack of support and have thus cancelled our subscription and uninstalled this app.

I am very happy with this app 99% of the time, and the other 1% of the time it drives me nuts !

I should start by saying that when I signed up, it was the only app I could find which would take products from Shopify into E-Bay, and then take the orders from E-Bay back into Shopify, and do all that at the price which a small business could tolerate. So thumbs up on that.

The set-up process was quite onerous, not because Inkfrog is difficult or obtuse, but because there is a 'best practice' way to operate Inkfrog to give yourself the minimum of problems. If you follow that method, then life begins to settle down, if not, stand by for a bumpy ride.

I strongly recommend taking advantage of the offer of a call with an Inkfrog support representative before you get too deep into the software. I did this perhaps a little bit later than I should of, and did it because I kept having problems with products not syncing properly, wrong photo's being uploaded, prices being changed etc. I had to do something about these problems because as anyone selling on E-Bay knows, you are on a very short leash.

I follow the Inkfrog best practice to the letter now, and the problems are very much reduced. There is still the occasional blip, however whether the issue is within Inkfrog, or because E-Bay or Shopify have changed something, is generally impossible to tell.

I have found the Inkfrog support team to respond very quickly on the whole, I have never been left without a solution, and generally the solution is there within a couple of hours. However, what I have rarely been able to find out, is why the problem occurred in the first place. This is really important to know in my view, because if the problem is my own process, I want to know about it so I can prevent further issues.

Aside from the occasional unexplained glitch, my main gripes about the software would be that in order to avoid sync problems, every time a new product or products is created in Shopify, Inkfrog will not pick that up unless the product download file is rebuilt from scratch. This is an automated process, but if you have products into the thousands, this can take a while to do.

The other main issue is that for existing products on Shopify, if you amend the photo's, these are not automatically updated in E-Bay. I believe the Inkfrog team are working on that feature though.

So, in my view, for the money, there is no better app that will do all that it does, but be prepared to put a lot of work in to getting it working for you properly. I would also say that I am not 100% comfortable that I can 'ignore' Inkfrog and let it work in the background, errors do still occur, and you would be wise to log in and check for anomalies on a daily basis.

UPDATE OCTOBER 2017 - I have been having various issues with synchornising information between Shopify, Inkfrog and E-Bay. It has been well over a week now and despite reporting the issue on THREE seperate occasions, nobody from Inkfrog has bothered to reply at all. Basically, less than a third of E-Bay orders are being pushed into Shopify by Inkfrog, so Shopify inventory is out of sync until I do it manually. I have also had intermittent issues with dispatch information not being pulled from Shopify into E-Bay.

I don't know whether I am being ignored by Inkfrog, or there is a much bigger issue at play such as the support team being disbanded perhaps.

Either way, if my recent experience is anything to go by, then the support provided is zero, which is not what I pay $29 per month for.

I have revised my view of Inkfrog from being optimistic about the software, to ready to move on to a different solution due to persistent poor support where elementary features of the software are not working as they should.

The app has a huge flaw. I use it to list my products on ebay and my buyers want to purchase multiple items which requires me to change the "require immediate purchase" default. This allows the app to cycle through the multiple items by listing them on my shopify store and then cancel them. I have had as many as 70 fake orders created by the app for an original order of 10 items, until the buyer actually completes the purchase. Very poorly designed. Messes up the store analytics and order count, etc.

Tracking #s doesn't sync all the time. It is very hit and miss with what it will sync. I have to force sync every day. wast of time. Also I contacted customer support manny times with problemmatic result.

SHIPPING PROFILES ARE DESTROYING ALL SHIPPING POLICY. REMOVING SHIP TO LOCATIONS< DISCOUNTS. CANNOT TELL WHICH OOF THERE PROFILES ARE WHICH< LOOKS LIKE "inkFrog Shipping 7a7e09a4-350a-4a2a-8b7c-5f3c0ba2e4d4 " Every time the quantity updates on SHOPIFY it updates EBAY and DESTROYS SHIPPING POLICIES. Cannot disable synchronization on SHipping Profiles. SUPPORT was no help. They insisted it works.

UPDATE:
We now have a new issue with Inkfrog: It created hundreds of duplicates of some order because of a linking issue with their software (as mentioned by their customer service, not due to our fault - we have the transcript of this of course). Therefore, we now have 161 false orders that are completely unbalancing our financial reports (and forcing us to pay taxes for sales we haven't made) and now require manual cancelling, a task of many hours.
Inkfrog refuses to compensate us for that, even if they admit to the fault.
If you'd like to pay 20$ a month for a service that will cause you trouble because it just doesn't work: we totally recommend Inkfrog.
If you are looking for an easy solution to sell on ebay without any issues, keep looking and please, let us know what software you use because we won't be using Inkfrog anymore!

Previous Review:
We used their app for a while and starting a few months ago, we started receiving issues with sales on ebay not being pushed to Shopify: this created many inventory errors that we had to deal with. We've been in contact with customer support for days now and nobody is answering our questions. They gave us solution, that do not work (force synch orders, but force synch doesn't work because inkfrog says that the products are not linked to Shopify and of course... when you go see the product, everything is well linked) and all we get is ridiculous messages telling us that they "Pushed order #xxxx to Shopify", which is useless since we get 3 to 10 errors like these every days - what do you expect us to do, write to you 10 times a day so you can synch our orders?
Their customer support is a mess and your messages get transferred to one person to another and no follow up is done. The promise of this software was very high for us and the options seem fine, but IT SIMPLY DOESN'T WORK and nobody at Inkfrog has any idea what is going on.
After a week of terrible customer support, we will now invest our time into making a proper complaint to Shopify directly instead of being send ridiculous replies.

Stay away from this app. This app is constantly out of sync between our shopify store and ebay.
We've had to cancel more than 20 orders in the last couple of month. The worst part is their non existent customer service, they do not respond to emails at all. The chat is never available. Do yourself a favour and to provide you a broken service.

App ran fine for awhile, then I tried to re-install it after an error. It stopped connecting to my Shopify account, so I tried to get help. Waited two days, contacted them again and was curtly told that when they knew, I'd know, and then they cut me off. Don't bother paying for an app you can't reliably use.

If you have time to waste it, this app for you.
No Data and Photos Synchronisation,
Remove your stock from Shopify and Ebay without your permission
Make a chaos in your ebay store.
Just wonderful app if you want always play with frogs, have conversation with irresponsible staff members, have errors trying to access to your profile on time.
You did not sell any more as configuration not show real buyers and communication with them, you will receive only fake accounts, especially emails. in this case frogs only jumping in your head after all this...
This app fit only for one solution - instal share your all stock from Shopify to eBay, and uninstall this Froggy App, as orders you can generate by yourself fast enough and enter real customer details from eBay for future marketing purpose.

From the beginning I never felt like the support team was actually there to support. The app also has so many issues. Variants do not sync correctly, app lags and has such long delays and no one will tell you why. You can send them an email with a list of issues and you'll get back a one liner response that doesn't answer the questions you had. I am only going to keep trying to work out the kinks since I've already spent money on this. But if you are looking for a solution to get your listings on ebay from Shopify, I HIGHLY recommend looking at other services as I should have.

****UPDATE 8-11-20 @ 12:10AM*** This is an email from Michele at Inkfrog. Even when they know their system has an issue and you request a credit for the time and money its costed you, this is what Michele @ InkFrog sent me:

Michelle (inkFrog)
August 10, 2020 10:51 PM (UTC-07:00)
Hi, Gabe.

There is a known issue with slow loading of some inkFrog accounts that the dev team is aware of and actively working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

inkFrog is not obligated to provide a credit or refund at this time - https://www.inkfrog.com/terms/

Sincerely
Michelle
Image 1

From US (IkoinicStudios) Sales
August 10, 2020 10:29 PM (UTC-07:00)
This is all it does when I click the “live” listings under eBay. I’ve cleared my cookies, cache and all history in Safari and even used Chrome and Firefox and the issue is still the same. What’s the solution for this?

This is the approach this company takes with their paying customers. Apparently, through THIER terms of service, they can pretty much destroy your system, have system delays, and there was something about transferring of code and trojan horses in THEIR terms of service that may occur but again, they are not liable. The only thing they are liable for is to collect your monthly service charges every month. Good going Michele @InkFrog. BTW, everything I just mentioned can be found on their Terms of Service so please read those before deciding to to business with this company.