Shipwire

Wow, I wish I had read these reviews 2 years ago before we started with them. Everything negative you read here is spot on. Truly a clueless, ineffective, unprofessional and thoughtless company. The problem starts at the top, management here, does not exist. They were not shipping out of their LA & Chicago warehouses over the holidays. I had to have our product sent to me so I could ship out of my garage. We paid them to do a job I was doing, on top of running the company. Every LTL we shipped to 3^rd party vendors missed their ship dates by weeks. This caused us to run out of inventory. Talk about a nightmare for a small biz. Run don’t walk the other way.

A nightmare of a company use for shipping. Probably the worst policies and customer service I have ever encountered in any industry. They claim you can leave at any time but their broken system, non-​existent customer service, and ridiculous pick fee system makes leaving a long and costly process. After two months of phone calls and emails and hundreds of dollars later, I am out. Never again.
They have a Better Business Bureau score of F and it is well deserved!!!

Absolute NIGHTMARE! These folks are the WORST. THE ABSOLUTE WORST. First off, unless you’re shipping thousands of orders a day, they look at your account maybe every few days to fulfill. I’ve never received so many complaints from customers regarding our shipping. If you are looking for a fulfillment center to provide the quality of customer service you provide DO NOT GO WITH SHIPWIRE. They will embarrass your brand.
Receiving took over 2 weeks
Permanent removal orders took over 2 weeks
customer service is customer disservice– basically they’re worthless
lack of accountability
lack of answers to simple questions IE Where is our inventory? Why is shipping take 3 days to complete? Why are body rollers being sent out to our customers, when we sell pet supplies?
They refuse to give you a contact that can supply answers
Bottom line, Shipwire does nothing but cause headaches and embarrassment. Their fulfillment fee’s may be reasonable but the amount they’ve cost us in sales, loss of customers (painful public reviews) and just losing inventory all together… they’re the MOST EXPENSIVE fulfillment you can go with.
We went with a smaller local fulfiller. The customer service, communication and reliability is a no brainer for an extra .$ 25 per pick. I’ve had zero issues since we moved over. Customers are happy with the 2 day priority option for the same price Shipwire offers. Too bad for that rate Shipwire offer 3 – 5 business days but warn your customers it’s more like 5 – 7 business days. With Shipwire we were NEVER early, and 60% of the time the package arrived late. To make customers happy we would waive their shipping-​bleeding money thanks to Shipwire. And when you are finally fed up with dancing with the devil, they will charge a full pick to destroy or remove inventory-​ridiculous. $ 2.85 versus what Amazon charges $.50 per pick to remove… something Shipwire can learn from a company that does fulfillment correctly.

I think this picture speaks volumes about them:
This is the package sent to us after we lost trust, spoke to management, got apologies, refunds… etc.
It beautifully captures our experience. It can all be summed up in two words: ineptitude & apathy
Look closely at that picture…
…How we do some things is how we do all things.

This company is AWESOME. You’d be a fool not to use them for all your logistic needs. They’ve truly helped me focus on what’s really important… making my customers happy!

Be very careful of how much inventory you send them, if you don’t sell it and either want to dispose of it or have it returned they will charge you the FULL pick pack fee.
We have very small items you could grab 50 of them in one hand, all case-​packed items. After a ridiculous number of weeks trying to set up a «special project» to have my inventory thrown away I am having to pay about $ 3,000 for them to do 5 minutes worth of work. There is no way out of it.
Complete sham and poor business practice. I guarantee you anybody that has had to go through this process will hate ShipWire for life and tell everyone they know to stay as far away as possible. Get some common sense guys, if you want your company to stay in business.
I would never recommend ShipWire to anybody, keep looking.

Do not use them!!! Worst experience I have ever had. They completely misrepresented what they can do. Miscommunication was the norm. Their system is completely run by robots, so there are no humans at the fulfillment centers. They make you jump through so many hoops because of these (never had any other fulfillment center need the type of info they did). After 3 weeks of hell, they said maybe we are not the fulfillment center for you. Really… ya think? This caused an extreme amount of chaos and delays as well as a lot of extra costs. Run, do not walk to another option. If I could give no stars I would.

Quick. Turn. Run the other way.
I started up my ecommerce company a year ago with Shipwire, since the beginning, they have been nothing but impossible to work with. I would highly advise any company — big or small — to stay away from this company.
Poor customer service (unprofessional, seemingly not intelligent or well-​informed employees who are ALWAYS right)
Unclear rules regarding insurance, terms of coverage and exactly what they cannot handle (I sent them glassware to stock & ship, not until they break in transit, do they inform me they do not handle fragile items). Again, a package branded with my vendor’s name is damaged in transit (not fragile), STILL not covered. Never explained and yet kept taking my insurance coverage dollars every month!
The rules around labeling and receiving are so complex, you think they’d include that your items need to be sent out in generic packaging.
All of your goods are hostage unless you want to pay $$ to remove them.
Their special project fees are excessive and unnecessary.
The list goes on.
So you can qualify my review, I am a global marketing and business dev. professional who has worked at MAJOR consumer goods brands. I believe in paying for and receiving in return, excellent service. I understand how complicated logistics are and would be willing to be patient if solid customer service is returned equally.
Shipwire is so far from a real, professional company, that I cannot believe they’ve made it this far. Shipwire has made launching a business unbelievably hard, when they promise to do just the opposite. With so many issues to solve, you want to be able to rely on your vendors and not have to fight them every step of the way.

Absolutely horrendous. I have no idea how anyone stays in business that works with them. They lost our first shipment, the second (main) shipment they uploaded wrong which caused our store to be offline for almost a month, and then when we finally got set up there were THREE hidden fees that totalled almost DOUBLE what their base rate was! Tomorrow our store will have been offline for a month and I am preparing to take them to small claims. Their incredibly opaque pricing system is set up intentionally, as far as I can tell to confuse customers, they don’t put things in writing and now I am kicking myself for not documenting all of our conversations.

Horrible Customer Service in Canada.
They don’t own their own warehouses and that means they have no control over issues such as customization, special labels/​projects, LTL, FBA etc, is a total headache. Inventory gets lost all the time as well.
Go For Webgistix they are a lot better.

I feel duped. The sales guy presented the company as a great solution for small businesses that don’t have time to ship their own goods, but actually you need a part time employee just to learn how to work through their system. I was not told when signing up, that each item has to be individually wrapped which cost me more to have our screen printers do, and having to deal with continuous errors due to computer glitches like: unrecognizable skus (even though my skus matched), unrecognizable shopping carts, non-​API integration of shipping company quotes, etc. I faced problem after problem and was not told if I ever cancelled I would be charged the same handling fee per item as individual customers, an excess of $ 400 for two boxes in addition to the $ 150 shipping they are charging. After multiple complaints and frustrating phone calls, they are finally «creating a project» to avoid the $ 400 handling fee, I’ve requested a quote to see how much they are going to charge me to spend 30 minutes throwing some t-​shirts in two boxes and print out the shipping labels.
I think that their main problem is their new client procedures are lacking so you feel like you are left in the cold. Their extensive video library is all you have to figure it out, or at least that’s what I thought, but then was told about the onboard webinar they offer to new clients. Too bad I wasn’t told about that three months ago, things might have been different but I feel like I still wouldn’t have been happy because there are too many issues that kept coming up, shipping costs being my main concern. How am I supposed to charge a customer $ 10 in shipping and handling for a $ 20 hat? I can send the same hat from our shop for $ 5 so that is what I am going to do, if I can get my stuff back. I’m still waiting to hear back from them on a reasonable solution.

Shipwire is fantastic. They have helped our company, Little Green Pouch, grow from an idea to a successful reality. As we noted to Fast Company, Shipwire integrated seamlessly with our ecommerce software, and the results have been stellar. Customers can’t believe how quickly our orders ship, and how fluid the entire process is. Shipwire’s customer service is also exemplary. From just calling to check in, to staying on top of issues that are important to us, to getting things done that we did not think were possible, Shipwire never ceases to impress. Their staff is personable, and very responsive. We highly recommend Shipwire.

So far we have loved working with Shipwire!
Their level of customer service has been amazing. Initially we had a concern that the shipping costs for our products were larger than anticipated because of the allocated box dimensions for our products. Upon mention of it, they proceeded to hold my panicked hand as they sent me images of various other packaging options and the associated shipping costs for each of them. I was receiving email correspondence from them at 10pm at night and then a follow up call the next morning to ensure everything was sorted! Their customer service is a breath of fresh air…
Their online dashboard makes managing orders and shipping a breeze and it is great to know that as our business expands, Shipwire has access to multiple international warehouse locations so we can keep costs down for our customers.
Thanks Shipwire!

Shipwire has been The People’s Chemist’s shipping solution for several years now and we are very happy with their service and overall ability.
Their online dashboard makes management simple and easy. The data provided online even helps us manage manufacturing more efficiently, so stock does not run out, like it used to.
We have several different shopping portals for our products, in addition to our own website and Shipwire has been able to seamlessly integrate with all of them. Orders are received and all the necessary information is exchanged without having to be hands-​on. Their ability to scale-​up along with our business proves that Shipwire will continue to be our partner for years to come as we continue to grow.
As the CEO I know that as any business really starts to expand, maintaining stock, keeping it organized and shipping it, with full information going to every customer becomes «the business» and if you don’t let the pros take over and handle this aspect of your business, you’ll soon be out of business.
Shipwire is the company I trust my global brand to.
Jeff Milano
CEO
The People’s Chemist

Shipwire is a great solution for the small business that sells physical goods. They warehouse, pick and pack your orders, box them up then ship them using the service of your choice. They can also do small tasks on your goods like adding inserts.
Their web interface allows you to control your inventory from any computer, and they have different plans for different size businesses.
This is a great solution for the small business that ships goods often but is not cost efficient to rent a warehouse.