Although dropshiping is just a fulfilment method and there’s nothing wrong with this fulfilment method given that there is a good process in place. But the dropshipping that I commonly refer to on this blog has some shortcomings. I’m going to list a few below.
When you’re fulfilling orders only and only from China, and shipping across the globe, there will be delays despite using e-packet only shipping method. Delays result in angry customers and angry customers aren’t repeat buyers. It’s more challenging to have repeat customers, subscriptions, or higher lifetime value if you’ve 1 fullfilment center in China responsible for your global shipping.
I dislike this about dropshipping and my team does everything in their power to resolve this as much as possible. This can be resolved to some extent using 3PLs once you have a proven product. Like I said, I dislike this but I wouldn’t go so far to say that I hate this about dropshipping.
What I absolutely hate about dropshipping is that there are many many stores that use the same or similar creatives, copywriting, landing pages and scam customers in the end. The customers, who are often very naive, can not even differentiate between two or more stores running ads for 1 identical product.
Moreover, most customers can not understand that they were scammed by someone else. Our support inbox is often full of queries about orders that the customers never placed with us. These are the nicer emails. The other types of emails are accusations and abuses also intended for someone else, but sent to us. Our ads on Facebook get flooded by unhappy customers, who also aren’t our customers.
I wouldn’t say Facebook doesn’t do enough. They run surveys targeting the people who bought from Facebook ads and penalize sellers based on the feedback. But such sellers move from one LLC to another, one domain to another, one theme to another, closing everything behind.
In the end honest sellers suffer. Facebook will obviously crack down even harder. The honest sellers will lose their accounts even more. This is what I absolutely hate about dropshipping.