Spocket: USA & EU Dropshipping

Confusing interface, nickel-and-diming, lack of support.

WARNNING.

I recently embarked on a journey with Spocket, opting for their 14-day trial for 99 cents, eager to explore the opportunities it could offer to my Shopify store. However, my experience was less than pleasant. I found myself unable to connect to my Shopify account without being charged 99 cents repeatedly, preventing me from even sampling the services Spocket promises.

I understand that for many of us, launching and running our own business is a cherished dream, and the financial aspect of it is crucial. We venture into such services to enhance our businesses, not to encounter unnecessary financial strains. Therefore, it is pivotal that we make informed decisions to protect our aspirations and hard-earned money from high-risk situations.

Below, I have summarized the prevalent complaints about this app. My intention is not to disparage any service but to share my experience so that you can make informed decisions and potentially save yourselves from unfavorable experiences.

I sincerely hope this information is helpful to you, and I wish you all success and fulfillment in your entrepreneurial journey. May your businesses flourish and your experiences be fruitful and rewarding!

1. SPOCKET'S DISHONESTY
Complaints of Spocket being dishonest and unreliable, with instances of customers feeling misled.
Issues with Spocket's representation of product origins; products purported to be from the US turned out to be from China.
Accusations of Spocket displaying false advertising about its services.

2. POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE AND SUPPORT
Numerous complaints about unresponsive and unhelpful customer service.
Instances of customers feeling frustrated due to a lack of support and resolution to their problems.
Reports of unresolved issues even after multiple contacts with customer service.

3. UNFAIR BILLING PRACTICES
Complaints of being charged even after cancelling the service.
Issues with unauthorized and unexpected charges, causing inconvenience and financial stress to customers.
Difficulty obtaining refunds, with some customers having to resort to disputes through payment providers.

4. SUBSTANDARD PRODUCT QUALITY AND SELECTION
Dissatisfaction with the quality and variety of products available on Spocket.
Complaints about the products being overpriced and not meeting the expectations set by Spocket's advertisements.
Issues with misrepresented products and inaccurate product information.

5. SUPPLIER ISSUES AND UNRELIABILITY
Complaints about the unreliability and unresponsiveness of suppliers on the Spocket platform.
Issues with order fulfilment and inventory management, leading to loss of business and customer trust.
Instances of wrong items being sent to customers and delays in order processing.

6. DIFFICULT AND INCONVENIENT PLATFORM USAGE
Reports of the Spocket app being difficult and inconvenient to use.
Challenges with navigating and utilizing the features of the platform effectively.
Frustration with the limitations and restrictions imposed by the platform on order processing.

7. FALSE AND MISLEADING REVIEWS
Suspicions and accusations of Spocket displaying false and misleading reviews.
Concerns about the authenticity and reliability of the positive reviews and ratings displayed by Spocket.
Issues with Spocket's response to negative reviews, including accusations of providing fake responses.

8. DAMAGE TO BUSINESS REPUTATION
Complaints of Spocket’s service causing damage to the reputation of user businesses.
Loss of customer trust and business due to unresolved issues and poor service from Spocket.
Stress and negative impact on businesses due to the unreliability and poor quality of Spocket's services.

9. GENERAL DISSATISFACTION AND WARNINGS
General dissatisfaction with Spocket's services and warnings to potential users to avoid the platform.
Accusations of Spocket being a scam and conducting unfair business practices.
Strong recommendations to consider alternative platforms and services.

El plan de prueba gratuito de Spocket no es gratuito. He solicitado el rembolso, y les he comunicado que prefiero una comunicación por email, pero siento no lo respetan y que offline pierdo el tiempo con ellos.

They take money after you’ve cancelled a subscription beware!!!

nunca me dejo entrar a la aplicacion y nunca me dejo conectar mi tienda

STAY AWAY
My nightmare with Spocket began 6 months ago. I liked the idea to have a subscription with spocket because It was a good option to add more products to my existing online store, that has been in the market for many years with a policy of same day shipping and great reputation, until spocket showed up. What a nightmare.

The first problem that I had and kept having during my subscription, was the delay in shipments, the suppliers take more than what they say, which caused me a lot of chargeback fees and a lot of bad reviews. I still, after requesting the cancelation of the subscription, have 2 pending orders, one of those has a delay of more than 1 and a half month and the other more than 1 week delay, and this has happened many times.
The second mayor issue happened when Spocket sent me, after 20 days without shipping an order, an email saying that I had to pay extra $70 dollars to ship the product, because the supplier was saying that. And Im talking about a little fanny bag. When I complained, first they cancelled the order without my consent, and then I complained for that and they told me, that if I wanted to reopen the order and ship it, I had to pay extra $70 dollars. After many chats with ramdom customer service people, finally, they reopened the order and ship it.

The third problem and maybe the worst. One of its suppliers, that I picked to sell more than 100 products in my marketplace, is a complete scam. I had to refund and received returns of a lot orders because the photos of the products does not correspond in quality and design with the products delivered. After checking out everything I discovered that the photos of the swimshorts are renders made on a computer and are not photos of real products. (all this was shared on time with customer service, that is more like a psychologist who listen you but does not solve anything).

I even requested refunds in some of the issues that I had and I refunded the customers, but the answer from customer service was always in circles, and always saying that they were going to send my request to financial, but never ever financial contacted me, and of course, never received a refund.
My nightmare was almost every week, I got a lot of bad reputation and I never reported spocket or had a bad review, Because as a business owner I know how horrible is a bad review, and I never leave bad reviews. But after the last 1 month delay and a horrible review from a customer to my business I took the decision to tell my experience with a 1 star review. Immediately as magic somebody contacted me and offered me 3 free months to delete the message. Clearly I felt offended for the offer, I was not requesting to continue the subscription I was just cancelling this nightmare. But then they offered me refund me the value of 3 subscriptions to delete the comment. And my question was, but who is going to delete the comments of my customers on my social media?, this is insulting.
But after a lot of time expressing my disappointment with this company I gave up, and I accepted to delete the comment if they cancel my subscription and refund me the value of 5 monthly $49 subscription. That was not going to repair all the damage this company made to my business, at least they were going to cancel my subscription.
They waited on the phone to confirm that I deleted the comment, and after I did it, they confirmed me that they were going to refund me the value of 5 monthly subscriptions.
Ok, the nightmare continued when I walked up in the morning and they refunded 4 times $19 dollars, but not only that, they were saying that refunded to expired credit cards. So they do not only bribed me, waited for me to do my part of the agreement, but also they did not comply with their part of the agreement.
I dont know how this company is still in the market, and by the way guys, NOBODY is going to be rich or have a decent income, selling overpriced products, that are not shipped, that the photos are not the same as the delivered products, the customer service does not work at all, and do not maintain their word and any other marketplace sells the same products for less money.

This is my experience, and has been a nightmare since week 1. And it keeps going and going, because, they made me delete my review, they have not delivered the delayed products from open orders, but also they sent the supposed refund (to delete the comment) for less than half of what they promised to an expired credit card.
Never again Spocket.

By the Way, the following is the last message the person from financial sent me today, how charm:
"Ok thank you Andres. We do have sufficient evidence that we have provided you a full refund via Stripe. So we have maintained our end of the agreement, and we were, in fact, offering to go above and beyond. We will now engage our legal team as well if you feel that is the best course of action." Kaylee

To be clear, I have explained many times that they are "refunding" the money, which is not the amount we agreed, to EXPIRED CREDIT CARDS, that no money is going to enter my account, but they keep saying the lie, because their interest is the DELETE THE COMMENT.

I don't want to have business with a company that is damaging my reputation, but also is charging to damage my reputation, but also every time one of my customers place an order I can not sleep because I dont know if they are going to ship the order on time, or if I have to pay extra to ship it, or if the product has poor quality, does not look like the photos, or any other problem. A nightmare in progress!!!

To be clear I was bribed to delete a comment, and they never pay their part of the agreement. The never pay me any compensation for the reputational damages to my business. I have a check with the amount they told me sent, I need to know the address to send it now.

Customer support is practically non-existent. It is a decent system unless you have ANY issues (which you always will with dropshipping). Unless you have an upgraded plan, the only way to reach support is through email which they do not respond promptly to. Very disappointed.

I've been using Spocket daily since 2019 and have accumulated extensive experience using the platform, interacting with their support team, understanding the nuances of its integration with Shopify, as well the entire dropshipping process Spocket facilitates, such as placing orders, processing times, supplier considerations, and the shipping of products to customers. This is what I can tell you.

First, a heads-up: most dropshipping platforms are bunk. The industry is riddled with false promises of dropshippers making bank off their online stores when the reality is less than 1% will find success in this industry. Be sure to manage your expectations if you’re just going in for the first time.

While Spocket is one of the better dropshipping platforms I’ve used over the years, it is still riddled with issues that will undoubtedly hinder your ability to succeed and will also surface unexpected roadblocks throughout your journey. This will make the likelihood of your success as a droppshipper considerably low.

I’m going to focus primarily on my experiences regarding supplier issues, as this is the backbone of operations and has persisted as an ongoing problem for me since the beginning.

Any experienced dropshipper knows that your business is only as good as your suppliers. Their processing times, shipping times, product quality, and return policy will all impact your success and bottom line. If the supplier disappoints your customer in any of these areas, you will suffer the losses—not them.

While suppliers need to apply to be part of Spocket, I’ve encountered very little quality control in terms of supplier worthiness. There are often discrepancies with supplier inventory and variants from the numbers displayed in the product catalog vs what the numbers display once imported to your store. A product may appear to be in stock and have multiple variants available only for you to discover AFTER the import that the product has no stock or limited variants. I’ve had instances where a supplier has claimed to have products in stock up until the point when a customer places an order on my store and I go to fulfill it, whereupon suddenly I am informed the product is out of stock or unavailable and I am forced to refund my customer’s order and suffer reputation damage in the process.

Additionally, you’ll find suppliers who have many products listed, however, nearly all of them have essentially low stock or limited variants or tags such as “DELETE” or “DISCONTINUED”. This makes browsing the product catalog and researching products to import extremely time-consuming and unreliable. The fact that Spocket allows suppliers to list numerous products without ample inventory is a key example of a lack of quality control in regard to facilitating the dropshipping process. Check out the supplier “Black Jasper” (which is a Spiral Direct reseller) to see what I mean. They currently have a large selection of products available to import, however, you’ll notice 95% of them have little to no stock or variants available.

As of the time of writing this, I have a customer who placed an order on my store on November 5th, 2023. I paid the supplier and requested fulfillment less than 2 hours after the customer placed the order. The supplier advertises their processing time at 4-7 business days and a shipping time of 7 business days. It is now November 21th and my order has not even been shipped to my customer. The supplier is “Orange Poppy” and they do not provide returns, refunds, or cancellations which grants them complete impunity in the instance something goes wrong - and mark my words, it does. My customer has inquired why their order hasn’t shipped yet and there’s no information I have to provide them. I reached out to Spocket’s support team, where as usual, they provided a generic response and no actual reassurance regarding any action items for a resolution.

This product that my customer ordered is listed as a “Premium Product” in Spocket’s product catalog. If you don’t know already, a large majority of Spocket’s products are listed as “premium”. This is because you are limited to the number of premium products you can import to your store based on the tier of your subscription plan. By making a large majority of products “premium”, Spocket forces you to upgrade your plan but this is unjustified as frankly, there is NOTHING premium about these products, which can be easily seen from this experience. They offer no advantage in quality, processing time, shipping time, supplier support, or otherwise.

Since starting my store, I’ve had around 35 products that I had imported become deactivated by their corresponding suppliers. That’s 35 redirects I’ve had to make to product pages, considerable hours spent writing & optimizing product pages wasted, and marketing efforts & money wasted advertising products that are now unavailable.

I receive email notifications from Spocket pretty much weekly informing me of products that are now out of stock on my store or deactivated altogether. As you can imagine, this makes building and maintaining a sustainable product inventory very challenging and time-consuming. Imagine you're laying bricks to build the foundation of a building but every week someone is removing the bricks you've placed. How can you build upwards in these conditions?

While Spocket as a dropshipping platform has decent functionality and UX, it is not optimized for your success as a retailer. It is a tangled web of disorganized product catalogs, shady supplier practices, limited customer service, and comes with a high risk of losses to your revenue and profit margins as a result.

While some might be the exception, 99% of Spocket dropshippers will not find the success they are looking for because the platform does not enable productivity due largely to supplier challenges including product quality, cost, availability, and reliability. To remain competitive online, your profit margins will be unsustainably low and any supplier errors will come out of your pocket. It is simply not a feasible goal to expect to create a sustainable dropshipping store with Spocket until some of these fundamentally flawed issues within the platform can be resolved.

Out of sync inventory management with shopify and suppliers, lost orders, poor supplier management, limited women's fashion products for US market with no product descriptions, extremely slow and ineffective customer service, inferior and cheap outsourced technical team that takes days to investigate and fix technical issues, and no escalation channel for urgent customer and live paid order/shipping issues. If you want to mess up your brand, hurt your revenue and push your customers away with embarassing situations on the orders, this is the dropshipping app to go for. We have spent thousands of dollars in marketing to draw customers and improve conversion rate, and as the orders have started coming through, we are facing challenges in almost every other order. We are giving this feedback so that the owner/management wake up and address their issues, compare their product with oberlo and other apps, make it better! They have potential, but have got lazy and over confident along the way. We have tried Oberlo, Spocket and other dropshipping apps, there is huge potential for new apps in the US dropshipping market to compete and grow. Smart dropshipping app creators should take the hint and build something nice for this market.

This is a good app for anyone looking to start a dropping shipping business on Shopify. As they state, there are hundreds of products to choose from for your store. The customer service and support teams are very friendly and easy to work with. HOWEVER, BUYER BEWARE; here are some important considerations based on my personal experience. Product stock notifications and COMMUNICATIONS with suppliers ARE HORRIBLE, which means THERE’S A PERPETUAL PROBLEM WITH PRODUCTS BEING OUT OF STOCK. Over the two+ years of working with Spocket, I had to cancel more than 70% of the orders placed through the app. The reason was because items were out of stock or the supplier was no longer selling on the app, and there was never a communication regarding these status changes. Because of that, my customers ordered with an expectation to receive, only to become dissatisfied and upset with my company when I had to cancel their orders. Moreover, these scenarios cost my business significant money for credit card processing and cancellation fees. If your goal is to simply show an abundance of products on your site, then this app may be right for you. If your goal is to make money in product sales with happy, satisfied customers, then I caution you to stay away.