What to do when dropshippers go bad

Was good, now bad

[hannamyluv]

I have a dropshipper that use to be excellent. Shipped quickly and was always on the ball. But in the past few months things have started to slide downhill. Now orders are taking as much as a month to ship and communication is zero.

I have pulled the products from the site, but I still have outstanding orders and people are asking where there stuff is. I know it will ship (at least it has so far), just not when.

Should I explain to people that the supplier is screwed up or just appologize, refund and move on?

[shigamoto]

Depends on how big the outstanding orders are? I would really really try to get the supplier to deliever the products. If you canīt just refund, apologize and move on, even though it might be bad for your rep.

Blaming the supplier might actually be worse since itīs an excuse you very often hear both as a customer and in business.

[cybert]

If its taking your supplier a month to ship things you're already in deep S#$%! You will be fodder for every review site on the net. My solution is you should always have 2nd and 3rd source suppliers for products. That way you can check with them all to see who has the product. Then give the order to the one that does. However, if the product is on a national backorder then you're probably SOL until the manufacturer brings more into the US.