Printful: Print on Demand

I'm getting very frustrated with the inconsistency of your printing timelines. I have an order from May 15th (from a very excited and eager customer, might I add) that hasn't been touched, but I have an order placed on June 3rd thats already been shipped. MAKE IT MAKE SENSE! And spare me the pre-written apology you've been replying to everyone with. I'm seriously looking for other POD companies that can handle this situation better. Printful has seriously mismanaged the COVID-related backlog. I've literally had to stop promoting apparel because I cannot afford to risk more negative experiences from my customers. Do better!

I wanted to love printful but a month to ship a cup is just way too long. No customer will wait for that and this will not work if you sync your Etsy shop. Customers on Etsy will not wait that long but they can't ever give you a better time. So I am wondering if the mugs are processed in China for that long to get it shipped to anyone.

Great & easy platform to create items, but pricing for that doesn't leave any gap for profits. You can't charge more, because it doesn't look good enough for that price. They always write under comments that there are no hidden fees and etc. OK but how about your profit calculation :) I buy items from Printful for 15$ and sell for 20$ so they calculate it like a 5$ profit :D A huge and complex company plays cheap tricks on calculating profit as kids in first grade. To get 5$ profit You have to sell it for 35-40 $ and after paying VAT, taxes, transaction fees and etc. You will get that 5$ profit :) If I order 10 water bottles I will pay 169.5 Eur (16.95 per bottle) and extra 44.77 Eur for shipping :) All bottles will fit in 1 small/medium box :) 6.49 first item and 4.25 Eur for every aditional item in the same box :) This is Absurdistan with this kind of calculation :)

I tried this company because I like the amazon link, but their mockup images for mugs only show 1 side (view) of the mug, so if the image is a wrap around or on the front or other side of the mug, it cannot be seen when listed/displayed on Amazon.com. A major flaw if you ask me. Their mugs are much higher priced than other companies doing print on demand mugs and their shipping is higher also, which I was willing to try because of the Amazon part, but with the above mention limitation, selling mugs on Amazon via Printful is a no-go.

Also their support department is very slow to respond, if at all.

Sorry, I wanted it to work, but it doesn't.

Sketchy quality and inconsistent delivery. And they take zero responsibility for items that don't get delivered.
Plus, the app is super clunky. Awful.

I decided to work with Printful among many other print on demand companies, hoping to differentiate myself from the competition with better quality and designs. I trusted the popularity of Printful, but as usual, the majority of the people shows itself ignorant and their opinions count for nothing. Because a client received my first leggings printed with this company, and the leggings have several obvious and serious defects, like a white line on the middle of a black color leggings. How obvious is that? Apart from a purple line that ended up blue. The design does not match what I created. It is completely different from the original design, and the back doesn't even align with the front. The back is completely unaligned with the front, making the leggings look like made by primary school students. Also, the product description Printful gives you says "Made in USA" but they shipped from Latvia to UK, and wrote that on the paper my client received, so my client will assume that not only did I lie on the product description about where the Leggings were made, but also think that my company is located in Latvia. I don't plan to sell more leggings or other products by Printful, because this will be the end of my business, in general. How can I trust this company? It is hard to do business with Printful and trust the quality of the results after this.

I have placed a sample order on May 26th and still is NOT FULFILLED, how can you do business with a fulfillment center which hasn't fulfill the sample order for more than 10 DAYS? I believe when you get too big you can not handle the orders anymore!

They make it sound so easy, but.....Out of 53 orders, 38 were lost in transit, damaged print, or wrong size as displayed. On top of that, the customer support is...not even there. They may, or may not respond to emails in days, or weeks. Don't bother calling, it goes to an automated message saying to call back. Provided someone responds via chat, or eventually email, it is a different person each time, with the same outcome...have you checked with the customer about the correct address?

Unless you're in the business of damage control, don't use them!

This is what you can expect:

ANTONIO: Shopify CS
STEPHEN: Shopify and Printful Customer

Antonio L: Hi Stephen, What's up? :)
STEPHEN: Hi Nick, I’ve just refunded my first refund. Order 1012. When I did that, does Printful also get notified and is the order then canceled?
STEPHEN: It was a “medium suspicious” order
Antonio L: Depending on the printful sync setup, I'll check that now, hold on :)
STEPHEN: thx
Antonio L: The order is pending, I'm now checking if there;s a way to cancel the order
Antonio L: Upon checking, printful doesn't have a cancellation feature, I suggest you can reach out to the customer and notify them that it looks like the credit card has some issues so maybe they can reinstate it.
Antonio L: You can learn more about that here
STEPHEN: Wait, from the link yuo just sent over it says “You can before the status of the order is changed to, “being fulfilled.” It wasn’t being fulfilled. It was still pending. And what do you mean Printful doesn’t have a cancelation feature? They’re unavailable now. And I have reached out to the customer—following Shopify’s guidlelines for security risks which is why I’m talking to you now.
Antonio L: It seems that the order is actually already "being fulfilled"
STEPHEN: But yu said, and I saw: “The order is pending, I'm now checking if there;s a way to cancel the order”
Antonio L: Yeah sorry that was my bad, what I meant by pending was that, the "being fulfilled" status
STEPHEN: They have NEVER moved this fast.The order came through aat 3:49 on Saturday. I immediately contacted Shopify out of concern to WHY this sale had been marked “medium risk of fraud”. As a partner of yours, and after I—your customer—followed your directions—I would think that this would negate anything having to do with Printful. They are your partner.
Antonio L: Alright let me look into that
STEPHEN: You can check with Sydnee C—she’s the one who told me how to do all of this.
Antonio L: Thanks for that info, I'll take a look at your conversation with Syndee C.
Antonio L: Still checking your account to see what best resolution I have for you, thanks for staying connected. I’ll be back in a bit
Antonio L: I do apologize on behalf of my colleague, I've checked the previous chat with Syndee and it seems that she mentioned this issue was going to get escalated, so I'll try to reach out to Sydnee and see what the status is for this refund
STEPHEN: I believe, the issue being escalated was an error msg from connecting my PayPal. I need to know that when I refund an order suspicious of fraud “says Shopify”, that Shopify has my back both with me AND partners. This is INSANE.
Antonio L: Alright I understand, I'm still checking what I can do regarding this.
Antonio L: I suggest that you can reach out to the customer for them to speak with their bank since the bank has the ability to refund this for them since on our end and on Printful's end this is already being fulfilled.
Antonio L: I do understand that this may be a bit of a hassle but this just happens for the security of your account
STEPHEN: Shopify told me this transaction was at risk of fraud. I followed Shopify’s instructions https://help.shopify.com/manual/payments/shopify-payments/fraud-prevention#search-email . All of them. The person who placed the order—from Kuwait—never answered their phone or email—they DO NOT EXIST! I did nothing wrong, in fact I did everything I was told to do. I suggest that SHOPIFY work this and ANY of these types of situations out with Printful. Printful has been a huge pain in the ass since the beginning…doing mediocre work and is completely inflexible with customer service. I had 3 out 10 orders returned of my 1st 10 sales…they blamed it on my files. I sent the SAME files to another printer and they cam eback BEAUTIFUL on THE SAME material. I ABSOLUTELY DO NOT accept this and would like to speak with your superior on the phone.

Update 08. Dezember 2020:
Aktuell nur mehr 1 von 5 Sterne! Die Kommunikation mit den Kunden funktioniert großteils, allerdings wird nicht ehrlich und transparent kommuniziert. Seit 10 Tagen wartet ein Kunde auf Erfüllung seiner Bestellung, das Produkt galt kurz darauf als vergriffen, jetzt plötzlich ist es auch bei den Lieferanten nicht mehr erhältlich? Ich habe schon mehrmals Kontakt aufgenommen bzgl. ausverkaufter Ware, jedesmal hieß es, Nachschub kommt in den nächsten Tagen. Nichts gab es!
Werden uns nach einem anderen Anbieter umsehen müssen :-( Juni 2020:
Defintiv der beste Anbieter! Tolle Shopintegration, tolle Produkte, super Features, schneller Support!