Printful: Print on Demand

I lost over $500 in goods and given and $8.00 refund for multiple lost shipments on the same day. Three weeks after warehouse dispatch, packages not arrived. First contact customer service said to wait longer and the packages will show up. A week later, second contact, told to keep waiting. Another week later no packages, they ask me to confirm address with the customer. Address confirmed - no errors. Next contact, tell me to instruct my customer to go their post office and investigate. More time goes by, my customer finds nothing. Next customer service contact, Printful will "investigate" and get back to me. Finally they admit the packages were lost. But the shipment is over 30 days old and therefore according to their policy they need not refund me. DECEPTIVE practices by all who "helped" me including representatives: Reinis R., Liene E., Laura V., Maksims S., Etele K., Reinis V., Shree P., Sabine O., Vineta G., Maija S., and Lasma O.!

***Before you choose Printful read this!!***

I cannot for the life of me understand where these positive reviews are coming from as they seem very suspect. To be clear, I did escalate my issues to their management team where I was told politely "Too bad so sad so sorry we cannot guarantee that your design will be centered or placed at the desired height." Full disclosure part of me is hoping and praying that Lauris Libert or Davis Siksnans Printful founders will call me and say they we will fix this, but I'm not holding my breath.
** Oh, and I have hundreds of photos to back all of this up, but let me first try and explain below.

First, if your purpose of using Printful is to print a one off collection for your bachelorette party, welcome home party or Congrats on fatherhood then don't read any further, but but if you have fallen (and shame on me,) for the "Too good to be True" deal then please please read on. I fell for the No money needed to invest in inventory, great product selection, and colors. It all sounds so good, doesn't it?

Well after hundreds of hours of designing, hours reading how to work with templates provided from Printful, numerous calls with staff and a thousand dollars spent in test samples I found out the hard way that this company is a sham for those who are serious about attempting a start-up company with their DTG printing.

What I did:
By following the design template I carefully studied the placement of my designs since I would assume everyone wants their graphic to show up on the garment properly, at the right height and center point. Especially when using a crest at the chest area.

What I got:
Almost all my designs out of more than 30 test shirts were off when using the bottom of the neck collar as a benchmark. Very few were okay but most were off by my placement at an inch and a half. Some were off as much as 2 inches beyond their (post disclosure inch and half claim) One and a half inches btw, would still be difficult to accept.

What's even more troubling is when looking at placement was that almost all the designs were not centered, some off by an inch! Even the inside label which I will go into later was not centered.

Why? I can take a stab at it and say that the operators are flinging shirts on the machines at a breakneck pace with no care as to where the shirt finally rests. The same goes for the labels mentioned below.

Other issues:

*Inside custom labels: Very few were centered and the tags were hastily ripped out causing most of the shirts to have their collar seems to split! Seriously!? The whole point fo the tag removal and custom label is to demonstrate quality with your brand. No better way to do that than give your customer a non centered logo with a gaping hole above it where the tag was Ripped Out. I'm with Tongue and Cheek here.

*Color prints were inconsistent. Some had specks of color missing, some had faded colors showing ripples in the graphic like the toner cartridge in the machine was almost empty. Uh oh, careless operator. Hmmm. Some had a sheen to the ink and some were flat. This was with the Exact same garment and graphic color too.

Now I am forced to delay the opening of my store. I have to now organize photos of all the errors and record notes as to the specific screw ups in order to return the items. All of this will take hours to do.

In closing:
I guess the only good I can take out of this is that I took the initiate to first test a large sample before I went to market. I cannot imagine what damage this would have done to my brand. The time it would have taken for both me and my new customer's to process returns or worse yet most would have not bothered to return their items at all, rather they would most likely just choose to quietly disappear into the distance never to return again but easily could have left a comment on my site, UGH! Certain death to my business.

One last thing Printful I will not quietly go into the night.

Useless! Usless! Usless! Useless!

The printing quality REALLY sucks! Most of my t-shirts are black with white ink and the ink just looks completely faded on all of the shirts, I'd add so many more orders if the printing quality was better.

Customer service here are abysmal. I ordered a hoodie on the 21st of November, expecting it would be here within the week, there was an issue with the design which they fixed, also letting me know that I had accidentally chosen the pickup option, and let me know that I could pay for shipping and get my shirt in the mail within the coming days. On the 27th, they charged my and claimed my shirt was already shipped using overnight shipping. It's now the 5th of December and they just let me know that they haven't even shipped out the shirt yet, so after asking for a refund, they told me I could only get account credits since the shirt has already been printed (mind you this is over 2 weeks after placing an order, 7 days after shipping confirmation). Customer service are slow and rude, I will dispute the payment with the bank - avoid working with Printful.

I chose this app because the products were amazing and the settings were making it easy for me to add my products on my shopify store. But little did I know that by choosing Printful I would make little to no profits at all. I charge the shipping separately to my clients, but the shipping and delivery time is outrageously long, even for the expedited shipping that costs over 20$ but isn't very different from the flat rate shipping and still takes almost a month. And the worst of the worst, I added beanies and snapbacks to my shop but the extra digitization fee they added is reducing my chances of making any profit to 0% because I don't and can't charge that to my clients and it's cutting up directly on my profit, so I can't get that fee back anywhere. Also I asked several times an explanation about how is it a one time fee? Nobody to respond and explain because each time I place an order it keeps getting charged. Sometimes it's 14$, sometimes it's 9.60$, but they said it was a one time fee. I don't really understand that definition of one time fee at all. So if you intended to to make 10$ profit on a 21$ item, good luck because the digitization + shipping + taxes will bring you profits down to zero. I'm currently looking for another POD that provides caps and snapbacks. Printful is no for me. Items are too expensive, and I feel they're purposedly increasing their prices and adding extra charges because they know they're very popular. Honestly, I do not recommend this compay for anyone who wants to sell good items at good prices and make profit. You either have the choice of making business with another company, display average products in your shop and make good profit or work with Printful, display cool products in your shop and make no profit at all. Nothing difamatory or derogatory here, that's the reality of my exprience with this shop. I was really glad at the beginning but when I later saw that ordering a beanie that is already displayed at 45$ in my shop (which is already very expensive) because I was looking for a 5$ profit would total me 43.26 by ordering it in Printful to get it shipped to a client it was the last straw for me. So I'll be left with less than 2$ profit. I don't know what I can do to fix this situation. I can't sell a beanie for 50$ jus to increase my chances of making any profit at all. Outrageously high prices is the best of making no sales at all especially for beanies and snapbacks. It was good while it lasted, but this is not working for me at all.

They is letting my customers down I’am getting charge backs , blaming it on coved-19 not mo true almost everything is back open get it together I need to try another print on deman

After 3 weeks cannot sync my Shopify store with the Printful app I decided to erase the app once and for all. A lot of conversations with the support and some steps to fix my issue but nothing.3 weeks just waiting for their devs to fix this issue. .3 weeks not running ads and over 50 products in a draft mode.

Printful is VERY BAD at customer service. When asking about shipping dates and confirming delivery times with staff on more than one occasion.. packages were delivered late to customers after being promised they would be delivered on time and no refund was provided to us or our customers. Nor a solution to reship products on time after discovering they would be late.

CEO was of no assistance or help and does not see value in customer relations.

The most awful platform. Beware. I ran 2 test orders and had problems on each test. There are too many steps, settings and troubleshooting that needs to be done for a simple order. You need an entire tech department to handle each issue and they will just blame with me and shopify for the breakdown in their process. If an order is not being fulfilled, there needs to be some kind of notification. Thank goodness these were only test orders and I'm not a real customer. Why go through so may problems when there are many other similar vendor's? Integrated apps are to make the process easier and smoother for customer's and store owner's. Printful is not worth it and their customer service is frustrating.