Fuel: Print on Demand

Feb. 27, 2023

have been working with Fuel for over 3 years and am very satisfied with the service and product quality. Although there were times when there were problems with processing time, Fuel was able to handle it and gradually stabilized.

Feb. 27, 2023

FUEL failed to meet our high professional standards and is no longer our exclusive vendor for Fitted Crew T-shirts, 50/50 Hoodies, and 15 oz Mugs. This POD vendor is not worth the effort for the following verifiable reasons: Their quality control department has been found lacking, their support team inept, and their app full of fatal flaws that will make your business fail. I do not recommend FUEL as a business partner in the POD market. 1) T-Shirts and Hoodies were far too often shipped with misprints, wrong prints, missing prints, wrong product blanks, and wrong product sizes. Customers would get the wrong size print other than what was mocked up. 13" large on the back would be printed 11.5" instead to save ink. Wrong print on the back with the correct print on the front. Inconsistency in specific print location as per the mockup generator. Gildan blanks swapped out for Jerzees blanks without communication or permission or a refund for the difference in blank price. Mugs arrived broken as they were missing protective packaging or were shipped using inferior packaging materials. 2) Fuel would print shipping labels within two days, but production would occur 5-7 days after the order was marked fulfilled - when contacting the shipping agent, USPS/UPS would state they did not have the package in their possession. Fuel also never allowed for size changes when a customer ordered the wrong size as they've already printed the shipping label. Orders couldn't be canceled or changed as a result. 3) Their mockup generator would have color selections for products they did not have in stock or keep stock on. Production times would become up to 12 business days on certain colors and sizes as they waited for blanks to arrive. They would print a shipping label to maintain their production time claim even though their facility still wouldn't have any blanks in stock at any of their printing facilities. 3) Fuel support staff would only politely respond with auto-generated replies - "I'm sorry...." They often ignored requests or questions and I'd have to ask again when looking for order updates on messed up orders or orders that had too long of a production time. These things happened far too many times and at my expense. My profit margins verifiably decreased 30% after switching to FUEL. The only thing about doing business with them was their low prices - of which they sneakily increased their shipping fees to increase their profit during COVID-19. They have two packages sent instead of one when customers ordered a T-shirt & a Hoodie combo and claim they were produced at different facilities. (not good for the environment or for our budget). When asked to disclose their facility location as proof, they ignored all requests. I do not believe their print facilities are located in the continental United States as result. For all of these verifiable reasons, I'm cutting my loss and moving on to a new POD vendor to further grow my graphic design business.

Dec. 9, 2022

Oh, I made such a terrible mistake! I swapped the SKU codes and had 68 people order the WRONG size shirt. Phoebe helped me fix the problem, stop any orders that we could, and helped me submit a 68 shirt CSV order to correct everything. She followed up multiple times to be sure I got my costly mistake fixed. This is outstanding customer service! I've been with FUEL for many years after frustrating experiences with three other POD companies. I print thousands of shirts yearly. FUEL has improved their systems recently and any past small mistakes and errors have been eliminated. What sets FUEL apart is their customer service. Let's be honest, a T-shirt is a T-shirt. I don't really care who prints it, until there's a problem. And, there's always going to be a problem of some sort. I've found that FUEL representatives are very accessible, very knowledgeable, and dedicated to help fix any issues. I always get a reply within 24 hours, and as I said above they often go out of their way to fix issues.

Dec. 9, 2022

The customer service is terrible. They will NOT ship your item within the timeline set on the website. You will have a angry customers. It's not worth the $3 cheaper prices. What a damn nightmare. Customer service was god awful, after I saw that my order didn't ship in 10 days, I asked for a refund. They told me we can refund the shipping fee. So they suggested never sending my order and refunding $5. Amazing. I wish that receive the same level of customer service that they provide. Thank God for credit card dispute process.

Nov. 30, 2022

fuel pod team is really helpful and excellent team. You are definitely not a victim. I recommend it.

Nov. 25, 2022

Oh my goodness, where do I begin? These people have the BEST customer service ever! Super affordable clothes so you can pass the savings onto your customers and still make a profit! And a very easy interface in app. Many places charge extra "hidden fees" but not so with Fuel POD. Not only that, but your first 50 days, they give you a DISCOUNT on clothes. Sure they don't have mockups (besides 1), or custom tags for branding, but neither are worth an extra $5-10 per shirt!!! You can spend the savings on another site to get all fancy. Anyway, I am super happy with them. I haven't had any problems with orders or customer service so far (their customer service is fantastic, you just need to be patient till someone is available on chat), but if I ever do, I'll be sure to update the review! Anyway, super pleased and happy with Fuel and I plan to do some YouTube reviews in the future about them as well.

June 7, 2024

Customer support has been very quick, team responds to the queries quickly and supports with all the possible resources. I have not received any negative comment on the quality of the product that I have sold so far. Would recommend this for anyone to start. My customers give a 5 star reviews for the orders, the support, the operations are super streamlined in Fuel, and best part Fuel is it also provides them at best prices, which I have never seen anywhere. Highly recommended for any starting their POD business.

Aug. 25, 2022

This app by far, has the simplest setup for your print-on-demand needs. Rather than setting up each apparel, for example, if you have a design that you require a t-shirt, hoodie, crewneck for, you can do it all at once on Fuel. Their service is amazing, very quick to respond with any issues I had. I have tried so many and this stands out by far both for cost and ease of setting up your products. They also only use quality carriers rather than these unknown foreign carriers you've never heard of. Since Covid, deliveries are obviously outside of their control but Fuel are sympathetic and helpful every step of the way. Coming from a business that has tried more than 20 print-on-demand suppliers, I promise you, you won't be disappointed!

Dec. 1, 2022

Good. Phuong helped me to understand the real problem. Thanks Phuong. Thanks Fuel for responding quickly whenever I am in need.

July 19, 2022

Fuel is a great application, but the downfall is it does not provide varieties of Print on Demand products. I am looking forward to this development.

July 4, 2022

Had a few stores with them, they really support newbies to set shop and that's a lease of life when you start off. Thanks Fuel for being there when needed. Yes, there are some things which can improve but your pricing is so good, no one there to compete. I have seen good quality as well. Just need it every time.

June 28, 2022

Update 06/27/2022 - Lyman reached out via email and refunded my sample order including shipping. Fuel has also sent out a couple emails regarding production issues and changes - finally. Support remains the most responsive. However while their prices are very good, I remain concerned about quality. They are also adding print facilities to help with their production; however these are third-party printers. It's great they are taking steps with reducing production times however I am apprehensive because by using a network of third-party printers the production and quality will not be consistent (based on my experience with other companies who do not do printing fully in-house). Pros - Support is very quick to respond; Cheapest shirts and mugs (but many other providers now within 50-30 cents and getting much closer) Cons - Poor print quality; Slow, inaccurate production times; Apparently they don’t stock blanks (I was told by support that they order the blanks each time an order comes in, so 1-2 days is wasted here) Poor print quality. It’s the second worst quality of the 5 major POD providers I ordered samples from; the design was “warped” (very odd, no idea how this could happen on a flat t-shirt) and the edges of the design were double lined/blurry. They’re the slowest and most inaccurate (dishonest, in my opinion) with fulfillment times. It took 13 calendar days (9 business days) to process the sample order and ship it out. And this is when they were publishing updates that their t-shirt fulfillment times were 3-5 business days. When I contacted support for an update they said this is due to the supplier that provides the blanks (the blanks are out of stock). So apparently Fuel doesn’t stock either any or enough blanks, unlike other many other POD providers, and spend 1-2 days receiving blanks for the orders that come in. Support acknowledged their backlog/stock issue but had no plans to fix it until the holidays, so another 6 months before it’s resolved and *hopefully* doesn’t happen again. Support indicated another 1-2 business days before my sample order would ship out and it took 3. I suggested they change their production estimates to 5-8 business days for more transparency and reduce inquiries, but didn’t care to and the next day published another production update showing 3-5 business days clearly knowing this isn’t true or accurate. It'd be much more professional to state accurate times, or note that some orders may take longer due to the stock issues they're having, but they didn't seem to want to acknowledge these issues unless asked, rather than put this on that production status update page or even send an email blast out. So in total I waited 16 days for a poorly printed sample order. I'm very disappointed because I choose Fuel based on a reference from a high-volume seller and quality from that order seemed better. So quality is inconsistent. There are dozens of other POD companies and many with quicker time and/or better quality. I do not recommend Fuel.

March 6, 2023

All 5 Star Review are Fake from INDIA! Fuel is ooShirts with 1655 Complaints on Better Business Bureau this year. They are also Scalable Press and have been reported as a Scam multiple times on Trustpilot and Various other sites. DON'T BELIEVE ME LOOK IT UP!!! Also if you're looking for help with an order please expect copy/paste responses as thats all they do. I'm pretty sure its just one person using different names to copy/paste answers. Good Luck they're complete trash!

June 6, 2022

This is the WORST POD company you can rely on. They do NOT ship the orders out on time and always have delays. The new orders will ship out sooner than the old ones. Totally unreliable. If you want to have the POD supplier that can rely on this is NOT for you because you'll always have problems with your customers. We had 1000's of orders with them and I won't recommend them.

June 2, 2022

Update as of june 2022: FUEL POD used to be good, right now, they are atrocious. So many delays with shipping times. They'll give some updates about their shipping times being 3-5 biz days when they fully know its not true. So many other reviews of them being absolutely bad in recent months.

May 28, 2022

The customer support is very helpful and replies quickly. It has been a good experience till date and I haven't face any major issue

May 24, 2022

FUEL used to be one of the best POD Providers, but it was USED to!! The issue here is that they became so bad that I wouldn't even suggest them to my worst enemy!! It feels like its a group of people that they didn't have to do something better, got some printers, bought some stock(always everything is out of stock, and what they tell you, when you message them, is that it didn't pass the quality control(which I at this point I am pretty sure that quality team its a myth). They need ADDITIONAL 3-5 days). They became so bad, that they had to delete their Facebook group page (where users could interact) from all the negative comments. DO A FAVOR TO YOURSELF AND STAY AWAY FROM THEM.

May 23, 2022

Orders over last 2 months have taken 8+ days to ship with at least one order taking 17 days to ship from the payment date. Support is slow and not helpful. My last orders are now at 10+ days post payment and i am being told they are waiting on blanks! Do yourself a favor and go with someone else.

May 17, 2022

A horror story... Just like some comment from this page... they always tell you that your orders are on the verge to be shipped... I wouldn't recommend this company to any serious and long term seller... Two weeks since order date. TWO WEEKS !!!!

May 11, 2022

I was tempted by their prices and variety of items they have but I don't recommend this provider. Their inventory is not linked to their actual items so you have to check an inventory list in order to make sure your items will be produced. If it isn't in stock, they won't tell you until a week later. Every time I've asked about a late order they spend days telling me it's on the verge of being shipped; I assume customer service is just told you tell you what you want to hear honestly. There are many better print providers out there, I wouldn't deal with the hassle of Fuel unless you have a very low sales rate and your orders aren't tied to any urgency.