ShipwireReviews of shipwire.com

I've been a Shipwire customer for nearly a year now and I can't help but reiterate and expand upon all the other negative reviews. As a side, be careful when checking out Shipwire on Yelp. Yelp's "filter" seems to have conveniently pushed most of the negative reviews out. You have to click on the tiny light gray "filtered" link after the last review to see the good stuff! Anyway, as I understand it, Shipwire does not own all the warehouses, but rather contracts with existing warehouses. This is important as I believe it explains some of the issues I've had. I've been fulfilling orders out of their PA and LA warehouses with drastically different results. The PA warehouse appears to be 100% error free. The LA warehouse is generating an overall 10% error rate in fulfilling orders - late shipments, messed up shipping labels, and incorrect pick/pack service. I've dealt with customer service on multiple occasions in an attempt to rectify the issue but nothing ever gets fixed. Now I'm left with no other option but to remove my inventory from LA, which as others have noted, comes with marked up shipping AND pick/pack fees. All that on top of loosing the investment I initially made in staging the inventory out in LA to begin with. A few specific costs to keep in mind that I missed when I signed up and that aren't well disclosed on Shipwires website - They pass along no real discount on shipping costs. They also markup USPS shipping rates by 15%. That 'free standard packaging' - good luck! The majority of my items, which would fit most peoples definition of 'standard', always seem to get hit with a box charge (around $0.50 per order for me). How is an 8"x8"x8" box not standard? All of that on top of service costs that are at the high end for the industry. If you want to ever remove your inventory from a warehouse, like I now have to do, expect to pay $2.85 for each item in pick/pack fees (no rate discount to $0.95 for orders over 20 items) plus non-discounted shipping rates. That cost is ever more painful when you're having to remove inventory because of Shipwire's own failures. As others have said, their service is horrendous. I've been completely ignored on occasion. They are always slow to respond. You're forced to explain things over and over in excruciating detail before their service reps even begin to get it. Their response, when you finally get one, is the bare minimum at best. I've honestly never had a worse customer service experience than with Shipwire. These folks are NOT a partner, as they claim to be. They tout impressive capabilities and if you get lucky, they might do an adequate job. But when things go wrong, don't expect them to step up. You'll be left to either suffer in silence, or foot a huge bill to pull your inventory out.

If a problem happened once, we can understand and let it go. But after encountering the same issues over-and-over again it becomes a major problem for us. We've work with a flash-sale site for a weekend sale twice. Both time the shipment were delayed and Shipwire's customer service were very non-responsive with our request to get updates on the shipment. It is like communicating with a wall and not knowing when we'll get a response. A few times they simply blamed the issue on my customer and claimed they never gave them the shipping label they needed to do the shipment when via email trails I found it was done already. Seeing similar comments from other website such as Yelp.com and this site I find this to be a common issue with Shipwire.com. They expect to operate this business like a black box and have no regard with any sorts of service level agreement with their customers. I would not recommend doing business with these guys.

UPDATE : AUGUST 2014 Surprised to see positive reviews of SHIPWIRE here and most of them look highly suspect. From the CEO down to the Operations Director, down to the account managers/ managers and a majority of customer service people - their service is awful. They lie, practice delay tactics when issues arise and later on, they give nonsense responses as well. If you encounter delivery issues, good luck. If you encounter wrong dispatch issues, well, you're on your own. If you run into customs issues, good luck with that, too. They like to run you to the ground so eventually you get tired and stop interacting with them over the issue at hand because it's too exhausting to deal with people who are not professional enough to handle things in an ethical manner. I will say it a million times over. They are not worth it. And these fictitious positives are so far inflated, I am stunned. This Company passes itself off as industry leaders with great services. Well, that's far from the truth. Most of their care staff have no logistical expertise so good luck if you need to send in an email for support. They are slow to respond, slow to process and extremely expensive. What they advertise is misleading because their rates are not reasonable and the only thing they seem to be moderately good at is shipping single boxes to customers. With costs, you only find out how much you're being taken a ride for once you check quotes manually - one by one - per item - per country, per carrier, per postcode. They do not have a transparent system in which you can request for a document that clearly outlines its services. If you need any special requirements or should anything crop up, don't expect the care team to handle this swiftly. What you can expect is either template messages, or, you'll have to take care of the problem yourself since they are late to respond and you will likely end up with an angry customer. The only thing good about Shipwire's service is its UI integrates with multiple shopping carts. Everything else from Service to Cost to Management is poor. Furthermore, when you want to stop the use of their services, it costs quite a lot to move all your inventory out of their warehouses, too. They're not easy to deal with and some of the Managers do not have proper etiquette when dealing with clients. I would not recommend this Company to anyone who wants a reputable partner. They are not worth the trouble. Avoid them like the plague. You may be tempted to consider them since their sales pitch offers you the world, but you'll instead end up with a ton of issues to deal with and in turn, they will then say that it's the way they operate.

Shipwire, for our company, was a very expensive mistake. Some of our products are getting charged at more than double USPS advertised rates. Several dozen emails back and forth, and they still have not fixed this. The soonest I can "schedule" a call is a week away - meanwhile they are pocketing $13.29 postage for an item that ships for $6.20 retail - on TOP of their storage and on top of the $2.50 per item handling cost! They do not provide any breakdown of the postage they are charging you. They vaguely say its due to them adding on extra weight and dimensions for "packaging". We entered weight and dimensions that were double those of our item into USPS costing system and STILL came out with quotes several dollars less than shipwire was charging us! They then claim to be adding 10% surchage - and yet still it adds up to them pinching an extra $5-$6 from our account balance for each item! They guarantee all items are shipped by the next day - but they do not provide this in practice! In their system you must schedule your order to be submitted to their system - it wont be submitted until several hours later in most cases. Up until that time they can just kick your order back out in a "hold" and not process it, and they weasle out of their guarantee by saying the item never got submitted (which obviosly is completely in THEIR control, and not YOURS). We have had many unhappy customers due to problems with fulfillment by Shipwire. We have now arranged fulfillment with another company. Shipwire cost twice as much as most companies we've liased with and are not even close to half as good as the service we receive from 3PL companies in our overseas company's. Most other 3PL company's pass on their significant shipping discounts - its just ludicrous that Shipwire charges more than double retail rates in some case - then they can offer you know transparency whatsoever. If you want to be re-imbursed for what they overcharged you - they will drag it out and make you wait and wait and waste endless amounts of your time trying to get an answer. Its awful! Having used 3PL for our business in Australia and Europe - we are sorely disappointed by Shipwire in every aspect. We are shipping our items out to another company in bulk - and shipwire are now trying to charge us their $2.50 per item handling rate to let us take our items! Avoid!