Drop Shipping Sucks

[mrchris]

With the company I mentioned above, the people who were successful on ebay would bundle things together, getting far more for 4 or 5 or 6 pieces that tied together in some way than others were selling the individual pieces for. They would take their own photos, use their own descriptions and their own item codes. And make some good profits on goods they never touched.

How can they take their own photos of items they've never touched?

[peteVA]

As I've also suggested a number of times, they buy one or two of each item to keep as backup, if their source runs out. So they do have one of each, at least, on hand.

But, they have them back in a corner somewhere, and send their current orders to the dropshipper, who ships the order.

Therefore, they ARE making money on the goods they never touch. Eventually, they'll see the demand fall off and sell the backup stock they have and move on to something else.

Quite a few of the folks selling my goods, particularly cell phones, will keep a spare on hand and if someone receives one that has gotten shaken up in shipping they will swap phones with them and have our tech guy handle the one that went to the retail buyer, so the end buyer is not doing without a phone for a couple of weeks.

It's thinking outside the box and doing a little extra that really pays off. Just using cut and paste, same old - same old isn't what takes someone to that upper level.

[FlysTheLimit]

I wouldn't recommend drops shipping to anyone. I tried it before and it went pretty cool for awhile. Then, the supplier started screwing up my orders. You really don't know if they'll even send the right thing or anything at all...

[peteVA]

I wouldn't recommend drops shipping to anyone. I tried it before and it went pretty cool for awhile. Then, the supplier started screwing up my orders. You really don't know if they'll even send the right thing or anything at all...

This depends on who you deal with. For 4 years I used one dropshipper, SMC, and I can count on the fingers of half of one hand how many orders they screwed up.

Some arrived broken in shipment, one or two a year may have had bad addresses, but them screwing up? So seldom I'd say never. I bought from them over $90,000, so we are not talking an order per month. This is constant sales, with shipping almost daily.

Even with items damaged in shipment they would take my word for it, as I would take the word of my customer, and a new one would be shipped out the day I reported a problem. I would tell my buyer to donate the item to the scouts or church group if it was of any use to anyone, otherwise just toss it out and a new one would be sent.

So, there are dropshippers, and there are other dropshippers. It just depends on who you deal with. Using a broad brush to paint them all as no good is simply not correct.