How To Be A Poor Drop Ship Supplier or Things a Drop Ship Supplier Should Never Do

I am very close to firing a supplier of mine. I really hate to do it. I’ve been with them since the beginning and while they’ve never been excellent, service-wise, I’ve been able to work through most issues. However things have gotten worse lately and I’ve about had it. So here is what they’ve done wrong.

1. Stopped Back Order Notifications. This supplier does not have inventory on their website, so you really don’t know for sure if they’ve got the item in stock or not when you order. For the most part, this hasn’t been a concern. I’d usually get an email in a day or two that an item is back ordered and I in turn would notify the customer. During the holidays, they decided that they were too busy to do this. So orders were put on back order with no notification. It is my belief that it is the supplier’s responsibility to notify the retailer promptly if an item isn’t going to ship. Not the other way around. This lead to countless “where’s my stuff” calls from customers.

1. Partial Orders. Additionally, they decided that if they had part of an order available, and part not, they’d just go ahead and ship what they had. Again with no notification to the retailer. So once again, we got countless complaints from customers that an item was missing from their order only to find out later that the supplier had back ordered it.

1. Changed Images. We also got countless complaints that the customers were getting the wrong product. After investigating, we found that the customer was getting the right item; it just looked different from the site. So, the supplier had completely changed the look of many items without notifying the retailers. So as a drop shipper, we had old product pictures without even knowing it. We had many customer complaints on this.

1. Can not supply item list. As explained in my last post, I contacted them to try to get a full product list (as well as a list of items with changed images) to try to do some updating. I was simply told that they didn’t have a product spreadsheet. How am I supposed to sell their products, if they can’t tell me what they are?

1. Terrible Website. These other issues made me start to really realize how bad their website is. Not only do they not have any inventory data, but when you check out, their shipping screen (where you choose ground, or whatever) has a cost of $0 for every available shipping method. This leads me to believe that they at one point made an attempt to give good information on their site, and just gave up. Of course, they do add shipping on later.

1. Told the owners don’t talk to people. When I voiced my concerns to my contact person (at least they have that), I asked if I could speak with an owner or some other high up manager so I could voice my concerns. I was simply told that the owners don’t talk to people. Don’t talk to people? I’m a distributor of their products and they won’t talk to me? Are you kidding? My only course of action was to send her an email and she’d pass it on.

1. No response to email with concerns. OK, so I sent the email. I confirmed with her that she got it. And after a few weeks, still no response from anyone on any issue.

So what to do? Problem is that I sell their products well, and like their products. Based on my vendor matrix, they have lots of cons but lots of sales. I hate to lose the sales, but I hate to continue with so many customer service issues that the consumer views as my fault. I’ve already lost several customers based on their practices, even got some negative feedback on shopping sites. I really don’t want that to continue.

Conclusion

My analysis is that this is probably a supplier that is really good in the bulk arena that is trying to do drop shipping without a good plan to do so. I feel as though I’ve made every effort I could to help them improve. With no return effort on their part. So, I will be removing their products this week and replacing with another vendor that I use. This other vendor doesn’t have nearly as many products, but they are similar and at least I know they are reliable. When I do remove the original supplier’s products, I will send a formal letter to let them know. In the letter I’ll reiterate my concerns and invite them to contact me when they have made improvements. I’d really like to carry their products again, but for the time being, I feel this is the right decision.

What do you think?

2 Responses to “How To Be A Poor Drop Ship Supplier or Things a Drop Ship Supplier Should Never Do”

1. Nathan Says:
   January 29th, 2008 at 1:45 pm

   Time to cut them loose. It costs too much in time and money. Not to mention the fussy customer from time to time. I had to cut off one of our suppliers for similar reasons you stated. Let them go. -Great Article BTW

2. tiffany Says:
   March 19th, 2008 at 8:28 pm

   Don’t talk to people?

   That is unbelievable. Did you end up firing that drop-shipper?

   Quick question – when do you charge the customers credit card? I’ve looked for that on this site and in your guide and don’t see it. How about Paypal or Google Checkout?

   My products often don’t ship for a couple of weeks.

   Thanks.

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