Gooten: Print on Demand

I was using Gooten when I first started. I decided to remove them from my store because it was getting too costly troublesome whenever I was dealing with shipping and setting up the back-end rates. Advanced Shipping Rules helped, but I was cornered into paying a real premium for something that comes with Shopify already. Printful and other suppliers have their API connected to Shopify, so the shipping already gets calculated when customers place the orders. Simple! And that is how Gooten should work. Until they get with the times, I will be using other suppliers. UPDATE: After one year since Shopify updated its backend to allow automated rates, Gooten still has not taken advantage of this feature. If I choose to use them, I will have to spend upwards of $60 per month to use Advanced Shipping Rules.

I have been using Gooten for a year. The quality of the products is great, and it integrates well on whole. However they do NOT do well when it comes to addressing valid and fairly significant issues, such as needed original shipping information passed from their manufacturer to the original carrier, then on to USPS, so that I have what I need to file a claim with the carrier for losses when packages are lost. Gooten's response? "Not our problem - explain what to expect to your customer." When I mentioned that their system had no way to note a VAT paid by a UK customer via Etsy custom order, so that the customer wasn't billed for VAT twice, I was told they hadn't heard any complaints yet from their manufacturers, so there was no issue to address. I'm sure customers billed for VAT twice and anyone ordering via Etsy would disagree. The list goes on. Plus, CS is only available via email and can take days. Slowly but surely their refusal to address major problems and deficiencies in their system are outweighing the quality of their product.

Of all the POD companies I have worked with and received samples from, Gooten is the most difficult to work with. The specs required are difficult to work with (making repeating patterns wasn't possible), making uploading images for a sample very trying. Then, once I finally got the files approved for printing, there was an issue with billing - which I was not notified about whatsoever. Consequently, I had an order sitting in "billing" for well over a week. Rather than a quick resolution, even that issue (a simple address update) had to wait in their system for another 12 hours before approval. At last the order shipped and the colors of the blanket were muted, the blanket thin, and it was shipped in a polymailer that arrived ripped. Perhaps other products might be better in quality, but after the initial order and the difficulties in getting it made, I am less motivated to try other products from Gooten.