Xtfu review for Printful: Print on Demand

July 27, 2015

Great concept, great integration - horrible fulfillment experiences. I placed three test orders (10 total shirts). The first order had major quality issues on all three shirts in the order. Someone reached out to me to ask about my experience, so I sent pictures of the poor quality prints and one defective shirt and he said it looked like there wasn't enough pre-treatment before the print and said they'd all be replaced. I never ended up getting replacements even after checking on the status and being told they'd look back into it. It's been months now. Anyway, I placed a second order after being told everything from the first would be corrected (customer service seemed good). I wanted to test out some different blends/treatments (50/50, powerwashed cotton, etc.) to see how they printed and to also see my designs in different sizes on different sized shirts to figure out exactly how I should create my print files for each size. This order had an item out of stock (after several days I find this out), so they asked if I wanted to split it. I did, so they split the order. Before they could print the items that were in stock, another item went out of stock, so it held up this part of the order as well. My first items arrived well over a week after I placed my order and the remainder of the order came several weeks after the order was placed. I was told all of these fulfillment issues were due to them moving to a bigger location and the supplier sending the shirts to the old location by mistake. After having put so much into my website and t-shirt designs, modifying a lot of shopify code, paying for apps, etc., I wanted this thing to work, so I figured their issues from the move should be over and their new, larger location should be able to store more inventory and put shirts out faster. I placed another order to see if maybe things were running smoothly now. I ordered four shirts. After 7 days, I got an "out of stock, do you wanna split your order?" email. I said to split and 1 of 4 shirts shipped. It's now been 15 days and I have one of the shirts. Two more were marked as shipped on 7/23, although they weren't given to Fed Ex until 7/25. My shipping address is little over an hour drive from where they ship this stuff. They mark is shipped 7/23 and expected delivery from Fed Ex = 7/28. The remaining shirt no longer says out of stock, but it's just sitting there on the order screen, yet to be fulfilled. Bottom line - unless you want to deal with EVERY ONE of your customers being extremely unhappy, don't waste your time with The Printful. Also, I've researched alternative drop ship DTG printers and they all pretty much have reviews full of complaints about fulfillment issues. Print Aura is at least up front about the process, saying that they place the order for the blank AFTER you send in the order to have a shirt printed. I'm sure they're all doing this and that's why it takes 7 days for them to tell you something is back-ordered. I'd much rather see a limited selection of styles than have to deal with these fulfillment issues. I still haven't gotten my first order replacements yet. The print quality since that order has been fine, but for that order, it looked like someone used a $30 printer to print out an iron on and then applied it in a hurry. If you run a DTG printing company and you can actually fulfill your orders in a reasonable time, please reach out to me!