Red and Howling review for Apliiq ‑ Print On Demand
Oct. 13, 2023
I had great expectations for this energetic, young company, but I'm pulling the plug, and here's why: 1. Lagging Fulfillment and Turnaround Times: The fulfillment and turnaround times were nothing short of disappointing. Countless frustrated customers bombarded me with questions about the whereabouts of their orders. Despite Apliiq's claim of a two-week average turnaround from door to door (still too long), it often stretched to three weeks. At this rate, you risk losing your valued customers, mind you, this is during the less hectic months. I shudder to think what chaos the fourth quarter and holiday season timelines would bring, with a potential wave of irate customers left waiting for their t-shirts. 2. Customer Service Requires Urgent Enhancement: While customer service is somewhat acceptable, it desperately needs improvement. Live chat is agonizingly slow, and email responses are no better. Waiting for a 48-hour turnaround is common, and sometimes I had to send two or three follow-up emails to address a single issue. 3. Mistakes and Blunders: Yes, we all make mistakes, but Apliiq's frequency of errors and the timing of these mistakes is simply unacceptable. Several of my customers received soiled shirts, one received an unraveling shirt and a few received the wrong shirt. The process itself is part of the problem - Apliiq orders the shirts from vendors/wholesalers only after your customers have placed their orders. So, if one of those shirts is defective (which can be often) I'm sure they just print and ship that dirty shirt. An unwieldy business model at best. What are the alternatives? Apliiq suggests pre-purchasing printed shirts from them, so they can ship out quickly. But at that point, why even involve them? The ENTIRE allure of on-demand printing is to avoid such complications! Alternative #2, Apliiq suggests allowing them to print on ANY shirt they have available and if anyone knows anything about t-shirts, they know that they vary wildly in quality and many of them stink! Declining Quality: I periodically ordered sample shirts from Apliiq to check my designs and received shirts with designs printed crooked and poorly printed. My theory is that they're onboarding way too many new shops and can't cope with the volume. And who pays the price? You, as your hard-earned customers walk away. I had high hopes for Apliiq, but ultimately, they fell short. The team is undoubtedly kind-hearted, but they urgently need to overhaul their processes and logistics. Rapid expansion at the cost of small businesses like ours leads to dissatisfied customers and disappointment. If you're considering Apliiq for your t-shirt shop, think twice.
Ah Amy, thank you for your review. I am happy to fill in more details to provide some context. Most other merchants have no interest in printing their own stuff, so your comparison (to you printing your own shirts) falls a bit short for this type of service. Now for the details: 1) All fulfillment times are posted publicly on the website and they have improved every year of existence for the Apliiq print on demand app. 6 days average across millions of orders. Shipping time with bi-coastal shipments is 2.3 days average. There are always some orders that take longer than the average and some orders that are slower than the average, but that's where things stand. 2) I think any other merchant needs to simply read Apliiq's other reviews to know Apliiq's customer service is second to none. You can talk to a real person, who knows our business intimately, that can and is willing to help you, and genuinely wants your store to be successful. If you send an email on Friday afternoon, yes, it may not receive a reply to Monday am. 95%+ of tickets receive a response within 24 business hours. 3) This is print on demand, mistakes happen, but there were 4 mistakes (which we reprinted at no cost to you) for over 335 orders. That's about 1%, while it's a little over our less than 1% error rate, some of these reprints were for your customers that previously purchased transfers from your store, then were delivered a dtg product for subsequent purchases, because that's how your designs were setup. Also, Apliiq does hold stock for high volume products at each facility, but less popular products are ordered as needed. There are basic rules you can set if a base garment you are using is not available in stock and using a replacement garment is better than cancelling an order in most cases, but again the choice is completely yours to make! Wishing you the best of luck with your store, The Apliiq Team
Create screen print quality clothing on demand with no minimum