My Thoughts On Gooten's POD Service (Daily Updates)

So I’ve started using Gooten these past few days to sell my art on products I can’t offer through printful, and since gooten has shopify, etsy, and woocommerce integrations I thought…why not? Well, my experience with them so far hasn’t been so positive.

It’s not like they’re completely awful or anything.

The number one issue with Gooten is their customer service skills, and response rate.

Even before the Covid-19 issue (which they use as an excuse now for their late responses) they barely bothered to respond to emails in a timely manner.

I googled Gooten reviews and found that many of their users complained about extremely slow responses or never even getting a response so I don’t buy it.

I wanted to use them back in 2018, but they would get back to my questions a week or two after I asked them so I didn’t use them.

Fast-forward to 2020 they’re singing the same old song. Nothing really changed even though I thought they would since I emailed them and received a quick response.

The minute I placed orders with them though…crickets. It’s like a bait, and switch.

You’d think that since they do nothing in house they’d at least have a strong support team available online, and actually doing something since they outsource everything and don’t do it themselves…but nooooo.

I’m disappointed, but since we’re in an epidemic I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt this time, and give them another go when this chaos is all over—if it’s ever over.

I’ll be using another POD service for the rest of my art prints, stickers, etc. for the time being until they start responding to my emails.

Here’s a screenshot of my current orders from gooten for my art print and friends shop. Some date back to April 10th, and are still in production despite the fact that it was originally meant to ship in 3 days.

As for the quality of the product…I’ll keep you guys updated.

Since were in Covid-19 Era shipping times are extremely slow so I can’t rate how fast they truly ship, but I can say we are at a snails pace.

Products that should have shipped to my customers last week (according to what Gooten said which was 2 – 5 days) are still “In production”, and better yet Gooten slyly went back to those products and changed the shipping times to over 2 weeks without even emailing me (or anyone else for a matter of fact) of this change. They could have at least sent a bulk email.

I had to manually go on the site to see this change, go on etsy, and then change all the shipping profiles. So far Gooten has shown itself to be untrustworthy, and dishonest in that aspect. Even printful bulk sent an email update after making a major mistake (but they were first called out for it in the printful ecommerce group).

Other than that I’ll wait until I receive my products, and talk about the quality of suppliers that work with gooten (since they outsource).

The most suckish thing of all is that I was going to show you guys how to integrate multiple POD stores with woocommerce since I made a helpful tutorial on how to start your own art store as an artist with tips and tricks that I use to also promote my art + get sales.

Update – May 1st:

Gooten refunded me for several orders that went way past they’re expected shipping times (we’re going on almost a month now as opposed to 3 -5 business days).

Update – May 6th:

Several orders started going out, and yay, it’s my older orders this time instead of newer ones. Hopefully by the end of this week all the orders for the beginning of April are sent out 🙂

So on average it takes Gooten about 4 – 5 days to respond to emails which totally sucks, because if you design merch for your followers, and they quick updates Gooten isn’t the ideal partner unless you order in bulk, have a launch date, do pre-order sales, and then ship items out yourself. That way you can save on the loooooong back, and forth with Gooten.

Update: June – July 13th

It’s been a long time coming, but Gooten support is more responsive, and back on track since they’ve stopped selling face masks (printful has the same issue as well, but they’re still selling their masks and gaiters).

All my art is being shipped, and delivered on time 🙂

I’ve sold several blankets, and yoga mats via Gooten this month, and have gotten great reviews from all my customers as well 🙂

So for now Gooten is trying to do its utmost best to get back on track after the face mask apocalypse.