"My rating of Shipwire is 2 star. Shipwire needs to better educate and walk there customers through their system and website."

My rating for Graham Haas is 5 star. After poor experience, I had a very positive experience working with Graham Haas at Shipwire's customer service. He held my hand through the entire order process and was extremely helpful. We, at Go Go Golosh tried to foresee any possible problems and did contact Shipwire ahead of time. I don't think that the initial instructions were clear or the website specific enough. We were not educated enough by Shipwire to get through their system.

Shipwire didn't provide enough immediate support. You can not reach any of the customer service people directly by phone. You must leave a message on their system. Everyone must call you back. The automatic email replies were not necessarily correct or explicit.

Until Graham, who actually takes care of the Philadelphia warehouse took it upon himself to take care of our order out of CA we were not getting anywhere. We felt completely lost in Shipwire's system.

More important thing my customer was unhappy with Go Go Golosh. They could care less about Shipwire. It was my problem and you were making me look bad.

"A third-party logistics provider that is RESPONSIVE and DEPENDABLE"

My company has been using Shipwire for our fulfillment needs for almost one year. During that time period, we've done over $1mm in revenue, and Shipwire has facilitated and executed the logistics for the majority of our business. Needless to say, we've been pleased in SW's ability to fulfill all kinds of orders, large and small.

Two of SW's greatest strengths:

1) very intuitive and user- friendly dashboard/interface. If you need to know where your inventory is, all over the globe, in real-time, the dashboard can't be beat.

2) customer care @shipwire is extremely responsive and helpful. More complicated fulfillment projects sometimes demand special care and attention; SW customer care has always catered to my needs to get a time-sensitive project executed.

"Crystal Barrett with Shipwire is Awesome!!!"

Crystal Barrett worked really hard trying to get our product shipped to one of our customers that had an extreme deadline. She made it happen and she kept me informed throughout the process so that I could update our customer. Her hard work is greatly appreciated!

"Quick. Turn. Run the other way."

I started up my ecommerce company a year ago with Shipwire, since the beginning, they have been nothing but impossible to work with. I would highly advise any company - big or small - to stay away from this company.

Poor customer service (unprofessional, seemingly not intelligent or well-informed employees who are ALWAYS right)

Unclear rules regarding insurance, terms of coverage and exactly what they cannot handle (I sent them glassware to stock & ship, not until they break in transit, do they inform me they do not handle fragile items). Again, a package branded with my vendor's name is damaged in transit (not fragile), STILL not covered. Never explained and yet kept taking my insurance coverage dollars every month!

The rules around labeling and receiving are so complex, you think they'd include that your items need to be sent out in generic packaging.

All of your goods are hostage unless you want to pay $$ to remove them.

Their special project fees are excessive and unnecessary.

The list goes on.

So you can qualify my review, I am a global marketing and business dev. professional who has worked at major consumer goods brands (PUMA/Tretorn/Carlsberg). I believe in paying for and receiving in return, excellent service. I understand how complicated logistics are and would be willing to be patient if solid customer service is returned equally.

Shipwire is so far from a real, professional company, that I cannot believe they've made it this far. Shipwire has made launching a business unbelievably hard, when they promise to do just the opposite. With so many issues to solve, you want to be able to rely on your vendors and not have to fight them every step of the way.

"Terrible customer service"

When I first signed up with shipwire I was excited at the prospect of having a partner to help me with the fulfillment services for my startup clothing business. I researched their website and watched all of their video tutorials months before my goods were scheduled to arrive from Pakistan. The first red flag was when I tried to speak to a sales representative to make sure that all was in order before my goods arrived. They informed me that no one was available to speak with me for two weeks! This was in late December and no one in sales could get back to me until January 7th.

Shipwire has a very detailed system that all vendors must adhere to in order for their goods to be processed correctly by shipwire. If you fail to do what they require they will charge you a "Special Project" fee to make sure your delivery is compliant with their requirements. As I did not want to be charged this additional fee, I made every effort to comply with their instructions and contacted their customer service center many times before my goods arrived just to make sure that all was in order. I even asked for a dedicated sales rep several times since I was delivering a full container of goods and thought this deserved more scrutiny. I was never assigned a dedicated person to handle my order and every time I called or emailed I had to explain my shipment details to a different person. All seemed to be in order until the day my goods arrived at their warehouse on April 6th.

According to shipwire, a portion of my goods had not been labeled correctly so a “Special Project” had to be done to properly count and label the goods that had arrived. I was never given a price for how much this would be, even though I asked several times, until after they had completed their “Special Project”. Several weeks later, I was handed a $1,200 bill which I had to pay in order for them to process my orders. Would anyone ever agree to such a thing without knowing what the final cost would be? It seems that shipwire believes that they alone can determine what they will charge you and you just have to agree to anything they say. All told, I took shipwire 4 weeks to process my inventory from the day it arrived at their warehouse.

To make matters worse, they screwed up my first order that was made in late April. It took five weeks for them to deliver a package because there was a problem with the shipping label. The package was returned back to the LA warehouse and shipwire charged me for restocking back the goods. They eventually reversed the shipping and restocking charges, but only after I had spoken with many people and explained the situation. Instead of helping and alleviating my shipping needs they were actually making things worse and making it very difficult for these issues to be resolved by their lack of communication.

This is one of the most consistent problems at shipwire. Their customer service is so poor and indifferent that at times I wonder how a company such as shipwire can remain in business. There is no sense of urgency on their part to resolve outstanding issues and there is no coordination between their sales reps and the managers at the LA warehouse. The impression I get is that their main goal is to make sure that they get paid for the basic services they provide and they seem completely unconcerned with the needs of their customers.

Just recently another disturbing incident occurred. A customer ordered an item but I received an email that the item was out of stock and could not be shipped. This was impossible as there were 41 pieces in stock of the item. Apparently, something happened at the warehouse and my goods mysteriously disappeared! According to shipwire, since I had not taken out additional insurance coverage “there are no options for reimbursement on this inventory”. This complete lack of accountability and responsibility is totally unacceptable. I can not begin to describe how completely irresponsible and potentially criminal shipwire’s dismissive attitude to possible theft of their customers merchandise is. Do they not realize that we, their customers, are entrusting our business and livelihood to them? Is this the best they can do? Their business model is not a partnership. It is one where is seems that they are trying to take advantage of their customers at every turn and make it as difficult as possible to hold shipwire accountable when they screw up.

When I spoke to the head of their customer service department, she said that this is something that never happens. Unfortunately, this is the same excuse I heard regarding the previous incidents that I described. It seems improbable to me that I am just very unlucky and that these problems have never been encountered by other shipwire customers. It’s shady business practices like these that motivated me to report shipwire to the Better Business Bureau.

"Couldn't agree more - Shipwire is a huge mistake"

I've been a Shipwire customer for nearly a year now and I can't help but reiterate and expand upon all the other negative reviews. As a side, be careful when checking out Shipwire on Yelp. Yelp's "filter" seems to have conveniently pushed most of the negative reviews out. You have to click on the tiny light gray "filtered" link after the last review to see the good stuff!
Anyway, as I understand it, Shipwire does not own all the warehouses, but rather contracts with existing warehouses. This is important as I believe it explains some of the issues I've had. I've been fulfilling orders out of their PA and LA warehouses with drastically different results. The PA warehouse appears to be 100% error free. The LA warehouse is generating an overall 10% error rate in fulfilling orders - late shipments, messed up shipping labels, and incorrect pick/pack service. I've dealt with customer service on multiple occasions in an attempt to rectify the issue but nothing ever gets fixed. Now I'm left with no other option but to remove my inventory from LA, which as others have noted, comes with marked up shipping AND pick/pack fees. All that on top of loosing the investment I initially made in staging the inventory out in LA to begin with.
A few specific costs to keep in mind that I missed when I signed up and that aren't well disclosed on Shipwires website - They pass along no real discount on shipping costs. They also markup USPS shipping rates by 15%. That 'free standard packaging' - good luck! The majority of my items, which would fit most peoples definition of 'standard', always seem to get hit with a box charge (around $0.50 per order for me). How is an 8"x8"x8" box not standard? All of that on top of service costs that are at the high end for the industry. If you want to ever remove your inventory from a warehouse, like I now have to do, expect to pay $2.85 for each item in pick/pack fees (no rate discount to $0.95 for orders over 20 items) plus non-discounted shipping rates. That cost is ever more painful when you're having to remove inventory because of Shipwire's own failures.
As others have said, their service is horrendous. I've been completely ignored on occasion. They are always slow to respond. You're forced to explain things over and over in excruciating detail before their service reps even begin to get it. Their response, when you finally get one, is the bare minimum at best. I've honestly never had a worse customer service experience than with Shipwire. These folks are NOT a partner, as they claim to be. They tout impressive capabilities and if you get lucky, they might do an adequate job. But when things go wrong, don't expect them to step up. You'll be left to either suffer in silence, or foot a huge bill to pull your inventory out.

"Had similar "non-responsive" experience with Customer Service of Shipwire"

If a problem happened once, we can understand and let it go. But after encountering the same issues over-and-over again it becomes a major problem for us. We've work with a flash-sale site for a weekend sale twice. Both time the shipment were delayed and Shipwire's customer service were very non-responsive with our request to get updates on the shipment. It is like communicating with a wall and not knowing when we'll get a response. A few times they simply blamed the issue on my customer and claimed they never gave them the shipping label they needed to do the shipment when via email trails I found it was done already. Seeing similar comments from other website such as Yelp.com and this site I find this to be a common issue with Shipwire.com. They expect to operate this business like a black box and have no regard with any sorts of service level agreement with their customers. I would not recommend doing business with these guys.

"If I could give ZERO stars, I would"

UPDATE : AUGUST 2014
Surprised to see positive reviews of SHIPWIRE here and most of them look highly suspect.

From the CEO down to the Operations Director, down to the account managers/ managers and a majority of customer service people - their service is awful. They lie, practice delay tactics when issues arise and later on, they give nonsense responses as well.

If you encounter delivery issues, good luck. If you encounter wrong dispatch issues, well, you're on your own. If you run into customs issues, good luck with that, too. They like to run you to the ground so eventually you get tired and stop interacting with them over the issue at hand because it's too exhausting to deal with people who are not professional enough to handle things in an ethical manner.

I will say it a million times over. They are not worth it. And these fictitious positives are so far inflated, I am stunned.


This Company passes itself off as industry leaders with great services. Well, that's far from the truth.

Most of their care staff have no logistical expertise so good luck if you need to send in an email for support. They are slow to respond, slow to process and extremely expensive. What they advertise is misleading because their rates are not reasonable and the only thing they seem to be moderately good at is shipping single boxes to customers.

With costs, you only find out how much you're being taken a ride for once you check quotes manually - one by one - per item - per country, per carrier, per postcode. They do not have a transparent system in which you can request for a document that clearly outlines its services.

If you need any special requirements or should anything crop up, don't expect the care team to handle this swiftly. What you can expect is either template messages, or, you'll have to take care of the problem yourself since they are late to respond and you will likely end up with an angry customer.

The only thing good about Shipwire's service is its UI integrates with multiple shopping carts. Everything else from Service to Cost to Management is poor.

Furthermore, when you want to stop the use of their services, it costs quite a lot to move all your inventory out of their warehouses, too. They're not easy to deal with and some of the Managers do not have proper etiquette when dealing with clients.

I would not recommend this Company to anyone who wants a reputable partner. They are not worth the trouble. Avoid them like the plague.

You may be tempted to consider them since their sales pitch offers you the world, but you'll instead end up with a ton of issues to deal with and in turn, they will then say that it's the way they operate.

"Shipwire - Expensive Mistake!"

Shipwire, for our company, was a very expensive mistake.

Some of our products are getting charged at more than double USPS advertised rates. Several dozen emails back and forth, and they still have not fixed this. The soonest I can "schedule" a call is a week away - meanwhile they are pocketing $13.29 postage for an item that ships for $6.20 retail - on TOP of their storage and on top of the $2.50 per item handling cost!

They do not provide any breakdown of the postage they are charging you. They vaguely say its due to them adding on extra weight and dimensions for "packaging". We entered weight and dimensions that were double those of our item into USPS costing system and STILL came out with quotes several dollars less than shipwire was charging us! They then claim to be adding 10% surchage - and yet still it adds up to them pinching an extra $5-$6 from our account balance for each item!

They guarantee all items are shipped by the next day - but they do not provide this in practice! In their system you must schedule your order to be submitted to their system - it wont be submitted until several hours later in most cases. Up until that time they can just kick your order back out in a "hold" and not process it, and they weasle out of their guarantee by saying the item never got submitted (which obviosly is completely in THEIR control, and not YOURS).

We have had many unhappy customers due to problems with fulfillment by Shipwire. We have now arranged fulfillment with another company. Shipwire cost twice as much as most companies we've liased with and are not even close to half as good as the service we receive from 3PL companies in our overseas company's. Most other 3PL company's pass on their significant shipping discounts - its just ludicrous that Shipwire charges more than double retail rates in some case - then they can offer you know transparency whatsoever. If you want to be re-imbursed for what they overcharged you - they will drag it out and make you wait and wait and waste endless amounts of your time trying to get an answer. Its awful!

Having used 3PL for our business in Australia and Europe - we are sorely disappointed by Shipwire in every aspect. We are shipping our items out to another company in bulk - and shipwire are now trying to charge us their $2.50 per item handling rate to let us take our items! Avoid!

"Shipwire- buyer's remorse"

I chose Shipwire for my warehousing and fulfillment needs and seriously regret doing so. It is impossible to get customer service on a timely basis. You cannot call and get anyone on the phone to help you. You have to email them to let them know you have an issue or a question and then someone emails you back saying they got your email and will respond within 24 hours. Then they call you back and if they miss you on the phone, they don't leave a number that you can call back at and days and days can go by.
As well, the shipping rates are ridiculously high. As a small business I get way better rates through UPS than what Shipwire offers. When I questioned them about it, they said that that's how they make their money and the value they offer clients is about having locations in different countries. There's making money, and then there's gouging. This is gouging.
Also, there is no way to arrange to get your stuff back unless you pay their ridiculously high shipping rates to have it sent back to you. You cannot go to their warehouse and pick up your stuff. I do NOT recommend Shipwire.