TOOTURNTTONY review for Fuel: Print on Demand
April 1, 2022
Update (4/1/2022): Fuel used to be fantastic for its price offerings, but today prices rose as much as 30% on some items. As someone who buys blanks for a living by units in the thousands, I know the rates they can get them for. Super unfortunate that we will be taking our business elsewhere now for majority of our items. Update (1/8/2022): I want to to love this POD vendor so badly since there rates and interface are good, but it seems like every month theres a new issue. Lately they have been sending emails to our already massively jammed email inbox when something is out of stock, and they only give you two days to respond. They used to just put it in the "error" category and it was so much easier, we would swap it for a new garment on our own. Instead, we miss some of the emails, don't realize orders are cancelled, and then customers are mad they have to reorder (and we had no idea for weeks). Also - they are way behind the ball compared to other POD vendors when it comes to adding more variety. For instance, they only have 2 "low tier" hoodie options, when for most sellers those are the most profitable items. I have asked for over a year for them to offer a mid tier/top tier hoodie blank. Also - don't even thick about doing hats or beanies with them - they take weeks to produce and by the time they get to production, the color is 9/10 times out of stock. We just today switched to a new vendor for hats and beanies because this was a daily issue. Update (12/9/2021): Quality seems to have improved, have had under a .5% return request rate over the past few months. My only complaint still is the major out of stock problems we face with items like hats, select colors of blanks, etc. Lastly, and most importantly, they have a very limited selection compared to every other POD vendor. They only offer 2 hoodie blanks... like come on there are hundreds of blanks out there that could easily be stock, especially a "better quality" one compared to Gildan. We still have to use other vendors to get those nice hoodie items, and therefore charge our customers who buy multiple items for shipping twice since it cannot all be done on FUEL. Update (6/19/2021): Quality is not good, had an issue last week and this week. Made a 13 item order, and 8 of them are faulty. Not sure how 8 faulty items are able to sneak by quality control, that must not even exist. Print on them is off centered, front and back, as well as sizing wrong on many of the items. Should not have to worry that my clients are going to make a big order and half of it be faulty. Get what you pay for, now looking for new POD vendor. Update (6/16/2021): Finally, things are mostly back to normal. Shipping is back to normal speeds, MOST items ship within 7 days. Sometimes faster. They did just raise shipping prices which is unfortunate but its the way of the world. Going to keep my rating at 4 stars permanently until they expand their product offering in the categories that matter to the influencer business such as sweatpants and shorts. Also, limited products in the hoodie section (top sellers for influencers). Wish they had a garment like Independent Trading Co or another midweight hoodie, the blanks are only a few dollars more wholesale. A lot of their competition offers it and sadly we have to use them for those products, and therefore have to charge our customers for shipping twice, damaging the customer experience. Would love everything under one roof. Another feature that is needed, custom neck tags. Our business is going to be at the point within the next 3-4 months where we require custom neck tags to uphold the brand identity as we hit new follower milestones, so hopefully they adopt it soon or we will have to jump to a new platform that can accommodate our growth. Update (6/4/2021): Fuel seems to have fixed the MAJOR issues they were having with production, hopefully that does not happen again. If it does, will definitely be my last straw with their service. That being said, they have returned to normal fulfillment times. It seemed like only when I mentioned that I was so unsatisfied that they started to care about giving me updates about the 30 day delays. I had to ask for refunds for old orders when as a company that should be automatic. They need to focus more on being customer centric and I think then they could become a top POD company, but they are long from there. I should not have to ask about refunds for things that should be so obvious especially when we do over 10,000 products a year with them. They also need a wider selection of products to compete with the other POD companies. For hoodies (top seller) they only sell "low tier" hoodies, and do not sell shorts or sweatpants of any kind. Those are major staples in our industry and are now getting those made by the thousands by an overseas vendor and using a 3PL. Wish I could have everything in one platform. Update (5/6/2021): Wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt, but we officially hit having orders that are 30 days old, which is completely unacceptable. No clue how it takes 30 days to put an item in a printer. We have started to shop around for a new vendor, but the process of transferring all our orders would be a pain. They refuse to issue refunds for super old orders as an apology which is crazy, so I decided to refund the customers that are this overdue at my own expense, and eat the cost of the item since I still want them to receive it and provide good customer service. Hopefully they can return to normal turnaround times soon or else we will be forced to leave Fuel out of respect for our customers. Original Review: Quality: Not bad for the price. The print comes out right 98% of the time. We have shipped over 7,000 items from them this year and I would say we had issues on about 100 of them. Shipping: Shipping, especially international, can be super slow. Some international shipments take at least a month for delivery. Domestic can be quick, depending on where it ships from and if it is DHL ecommerce or USPS Priority. Turnaround time: This is my biggest complaint. Sometimes they ship stuff out in one day, sometimes it takes a month. We currently have 8 orders that are almost 30 days old. That is not acceptable for any business, and I wish they would recognize that and give some refunds like any other proper business would do. Customer Service: Respond pretty quickly, but sometimes they have a hard time understanding what I am asking for. I think the customer service is international based. The App: The app must be accessed through Shopify, you cannot access it on a standalone website. The system is relatively dynamic, but when you try to change existing items, etc, it gets pretty complicated. Luckily their FAQ gets updated somewhat frequently. Overall: If they could just fix their turnaround time, or at least be sympathetic to their customers when they get promised from customer service that are not kept, they would be able to compete with the big players in POD. I work with other clients that could bring them thousands of orders per year each, but I am refraining from bringing them over to the FUEL because of turnaround times.
