We were initially excited to partner with Flowspace as a small toy company we needed help with fulfillment. But over a year later we’ve found out that they overcharged us by $38,000!!! They agreed that they had made errors and refunded (after weekly phone calls and emails) all but $10,000 which they say we are too late to claim!
AND they now have let inventory oversell and charged us storage fees on items they say they never had. Leading to a customer service nightmare for us!
KH
Khila
do not use flowspace
Using Flowspace to fulfillment my orders is the biggest mistake I’ve ever made for my business.
Over the course of the 6 months I used them:
- They swapped SKUs in the warehouse so customers were consistently receiving the wrong items they purchased.
- They were choosing the most expensive shipping options instead of the specific option I specified I wanted used.
- Decided to not ship orders to Canada without consulting me.
- & Finally, started charging me $550 a month instead of $250 without letting me know. Literally increased my monthly fee by $300 and I had to find out from my bank.
Flowspace’s logistics and customer service are such a headache that they are not worth $250, let alone $550. I immediately got all of my inventory out of there and have since switched to ShipBob.com which is 10x better for way less. Do yourself and your business a favor and steer clear of Flowspace.
Response from FlowspaceJan 31, 2022
Hi Khali,
Flowspace thanks you for your feedback. During our partnership with The Bougie Brand, we did move two alike sku's to different locations in the warehouse to ensure picking accuracy. Orders can be shipped to Canada with the harmonization code properly set up for shipping internationally. We did take time with your assistant and showed her the proper steps to set up this code; when ready to execute Canada shipments. We are very transparent with our merchants and did send communications regarding increasing our platform fees. We did offer you an extension to April, to pay the updated platform fees. We take pride in our partnerships and overall accept your final decision regarding your operations needs.
Regards,
Flowspace Team
BE
Brittany E.
DO NOT WORK WITH FLOWSPACE
Absolutely atrocious company and experience. My business worked with them for over a year and there were ENORMOUS problems (wrong items delivered, packing directives not followed, no accountability taken for their many mistakes, overcharged for shipping (and everything else), refunds not given, shipping your customers products you don't sell, sending your customers multiples of what they actually ordered... shall I go on?) They removed my ability to disable my billing information and continued to charge me for fees that should have not been billed. The company has now been MIA for months and clearly has no intention of reimbursing me for the money they stole and product they lost/broke. This is a HIGHLY UNETHICAL business that should not be in business. If you have any interest in growing a product-based business, a 3PL/4PL is a very important decision as they are an extension of your business. Flowspace will not do ANYTHING they say they will and have the ability to completely put you out of business. DO NOT WORK WITH THEM!!!! Save yourself the money, headache and stress they will inevitably cause. They don't own the warehouses they partner with and therefore cannot do anything to resolve these problems. The only thing that would be within their control is reimbursements but they will steal from you rather than risking their bottom line. One can only hope to recover even just a small portion of the tens of thousands of dollars they have cost my business. Good luck.
Response from FlowspaceJan 20, 2022
Hi Brittany Edwards. Flowspace thanks you for your feedback. During our partnership with Pepper + Vetiver, we did respond to your various requests in a timely fashion until the end of our agreement. After many attempts to have you utilize our user interface and provide sufficient shipping/packing directives, we were not successful. Upon careful consideration, we decided to end the partnership on our end. During the transition period, we worked patiently with you to give you time to find another vendor, to ensure a smooth transition with no disruptions to your operation. We take pride in our services we provide and aim to develop long term partnerships with our merchants. Flowspace wishes you the absolute best in all of your future endeavors.
AV
Anastasia V.
Scammy charges
Incorrect inventory count leading to charging extra for ghost inventory, raising prices by 20-50% after half a year, overcharging on packing fees, incorrect shipping fees calculation (how about $80 instead of $8?), not following packing directions. No thank you. Enough is enough.
UPD: Alright, it's been seven days as I'm trying to get my inventory to FBA (but first they need to enter a correct amount otherwise can't create outbound order) and the warehouse is not replying, customer service is not replying. I'm stuck with diminishing inventory on Amazon (and we all know what it means for the rankings) while Flowspace team is unresponsive.
Response from FlowspaceDec 23, 2021
Anastasia, I am regretful of your service experience. Your feedback is very valuable to us and we are working everyday to ensure we provide a stellar client experience.
RY
Ryan
This is a horrendous company
This is a horrendous company. They are attempting to be Uber for fulfillment but like Uber they have no control over their warehouses. They are an unnecessary middleman that hurts small businesses by overcharging for a very poor, unreliable product.
Response from FlowspaceNov 11, 2021
Your feedback is very valuable to the Flowspace team. Our management team would like to learn more about your service experience. We take pride in our services we provide and want to ensure we partner with warehouses on actions and partnerships. Please reach out to [email protected] and ask for a member of management.
Thank you,
Flowspace
AE
An E.
Avoid Flowspace unless you want your company to go bankrupt
Worst 3PL experience we've ever had.
The sales rep said the warehouse he chose for us was the best in their network. That was a lie. It turned out it was a warehouse they had just signed up. That warehouse was awful. They shipped each customer a full case of product instead of one item! They managed to lose nearly our entire inventory that way. What's worse, Flowspace tried to blame it on us by saying we changed the definition of "eaches" in their system. There is no way for a user to do that. Unit orders were cleared marked as "eaches" and case orders were clearly marked as such. The reason for the issue was that the warehouse had just been signed up by Flowspace and hadn't been properly trained on their system. Even after we raised the alarm and told them to stop shipping entire cases, they continued to do so for weeks! It was like the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.
Even after we emailed the CEO, Ben Eachus, several times, he never responded. It's like he doesn't give a hoot. I've never seen such poor management.
After they lost most of our product, we were out of stock for months because they woudn’t release what remained of our inventory. As a result, we lost our organic rankings on Amazon, our company lost millions of dollars in enterprise value and was nearly bankrupted.
Flowspace said if we'd send invoices, they'd reimburse us for the cost of the goods. Instead, they made a ridiculous offer that amounts to a tiny percentage of the goods lost, not to mention the millions of dollars of enterprise value that was lost.
We responded to their insulting offer by asking them to make a reasonable one but they did not even bother to reply.
This company is so awful, it does not deserve to exist. I rue the day we decided to trust our business to them. They will soon be served with a lawsuit and have to pay for the immense harm they have inflicted upon us.
PS: there were many other problems like when they shipped several pallet loads to the wrong destination and then lost track of them. Miraculously, we found the pallets, saving Flowspace the cost of another claim. They were so grateful, they said they’d reimburse us for the cost of shipping the pallets to the correct destination; they failed to keep that promise as well. They kept automatically billing us after we left and never refunded those charges. When we finally closed our bank account to put an end to the auto withdrawals by Flowspace, their billing department started calling us demanding payment. No one within their company had told them we were no longer Flowspace customers. This shows you how disorganized this company is. Would you trust your livelihood to them?
UPDATE: In response to Flowspace's reply I say your words are meaningless until you step up and pay what you owe us.
Response from FlowspaceNov 5, 2021
Hello,
I am regretful of your service experience. Your feedback is very valuable to us and we are working everyday to ensure we provide a stellar client experience by partnering with our warehouse partners on best practices. We are making significant investments to have best-in-class SLAs and Customer Service. We appreciate your feedback and will use it to improve.
Thank you,
The Flowspace Team
[email protected]
BS
Brittany S.
Not worth the headache
We have been working with Flowspace for over 6 months and the problems only continue to get worse. Their warehouses partners are constantly ignoring packing directives, breaking our products, shipping the wrong items and costing us tremendous money. Flowspace does nothing to hold them accountable or make good on these losses in fact that continue to overcharge you. For example, if the warehouse ships the wrong items and you have a customer return it, they charge you to "inbound" the return even though it's being returned because of a Flowspace/warehouse mistake. This company is too new and lacks very important functionality making things very manual and adding more work to your plate. I highly recommend exploring another 3PL/4PL avenue as we have given them ample time to try to fix these issues and unfortunately, we are discovering more problems day to day than they are solving.
**Update based on Flowspace's reply** They were given over a year to correct these issues and as I wrote above, there were more problems arising on a daily basis than their team was able to solve due to inadequate technology, poor customer service with no accountability and outsourced warehouses that they don't seem to have any control over (as they are constantly shipping the wrong items, not following packing directives, shipping duplicate orders, shipping the wrong quantities - all the base line tasks that the fulfillment service is supposed to be). Nothing is going smoothly with Flowspace and there has been no improvement in a year - things only continue to get worse. Not to mention, their customer service team cannot follow instructions, are lazy and have a high turnover so you're constantly dealing with different unhelpful people. To anyone considering them, Flowspace will take up more time than they are saving and have no problem letting detrimental problems continue to happen and negatively impact your business (costing you tons of time and money). They would rather do nothing and write useless, lengthy emails (telling you they aren't going to help you) than find solutions.
BEWARE of the fake 5-star reviews. When there are only 1 and 5 star reviews with almost none in between, it signals that the 5 stars are fake. A 3PL is a partner you are building your business on top of so be careful who you choose for this as it will make or break your business and with Flowspace, it will break it :(
Response from FlowspaceSep 10, 2021
Hello,
I am sorry to hear that your experience has been challenging. We would appreciate the opportunity to address your concerns and fix any inaccurate billing. Please work with our Customer Success representatives to resolve this issue.
Thank you,
The Flowspace Team
[email protected]
DE
David E.
Terrible Overall - Unreliable shipping, poor support
Orders do not ship fast, the warehouses cannot handle 1-day or 2-day shipping, the Amazon services are poor, and the charges are often inaccurate and higher than agreed upon. Overall, FlowSpace does not ship on time. They’ve gone from shipping late to printing labels on the night the order should ship, but they don’t actually get the package to the carrier for another 1-3 days. Of the 1,051 orders shipped in the last 3 months, nearly half were shipped late (505 orders, 48%) leading to over half being delivered late (546 orders, 52%). There are 12 orders (1.14%) that had labels printed, but were never shipped at all resulting in negative feedback and buyer refunds.
Since orders ship late, if I’m using my Amazon account to purchase shipping the ground shipping options disappear leaving only expedited options to make the deliver by date. So I had to turn that off, and the warehouse began to use expedited shipping options to make up for the slow processing time. I also had to decrease my order volume, as I do not trust the warehouse to handle increased orders. I had to push out a few hundred orders over a 2-day period, and the PA warehouse experienced a number of errors and late or missing shipments.
I was shipping orders through FlowSpace using Seller Fulfilled Prime. Warehouse personnel assured me the orders would ship on time, but most did not. I understand there are issues with some carriers not scanning at pick-up, but the packages should still be delivered in time regardless (barring any unforeseen carrier issues). I had to keep on top of the warehouse to ship the SFP orders, and I continually noticed the orders being scanned as picked up days after the label was printed. Amazon threatened to suspended my SFP privileges, and I had to write explanations for the issues in order to remain in the program. I subsequently discontinued shipping SFP with FlowSpace.
Outgoing Amazon FBA orders are a problem as well. Most palletized orders sit for a week or more, and I have to continually ask for pallets weights and dimensions. On one occasion, the warehouse simply guessed at what the pallet count and dimensions would be. After waiting for a week, I was told the shipment was 10 pallets. I said this was not possible, and was then told it was 3 pallets and was not given the weights. When I asked for the weight, I was told it was actually 7 pallets. If I hadn’t pressed further, I would have unnecessarily paid to ship 3 additional pallets. The warehouse said they were estimating.
Most recently, 15 shipments from 3 weeks ago were never delivered to the customer. FlowSpace insists they were shipped, but can provide no proof as the packages were never scanned.
FlowSpace customer service takes no responsibility for any errors and will blow you off with an excuse like, Carriers are not scanning packages at pickup. But these unscanned packages are never delivered!
Response from FlowspaceSep 10, 2021
Hi David,
I am sorry to hear about your negative experience. We are making significant investments to have best-in-class SLAs and Customer Service. We appreciate your feedback and will use it to improve.
Thank you,
The Flowspace Team
[email protected]