Service Details
eFulfillment Service (EFS) provides small-to-medium sized sellers with services including product storage, order fulfillment, and returns handling.
Their web-based software allows sellers to view inventory, check orders and shipments, and request additional services or support.
Business terms are no contract tie-in, no minimum volume, and pay-as-you-go. Integration with shopping carts is free, and a 30-day “Test Drive” is available with fees refunded if the seller decides not to continue.
| Platform | SaaS (Cloud Web App) |
| Customers Supported | United States |
Pricing & Trial
| Price Range |
| Contact the supplier for a quote. |
| Trial Length: 30 days |
Integrations & Compatibility
| details | integrations |
|---|---|
| Amazon Sites | Amazon.com |
| eBay Sites | eBay.com |
| Alternative Marketplaces | Overstock Shopping |
| Multichannel Software | ChannelAdvisor |
| Shipping & Fulfillment | OrderMotion |
| Carts, Payment & POS | 1ShoppingCart 3dcart AmeriCommerce BigCommerce CS-Cart Interspire Magento Miva Merchant OpenCart PayPal Pinnacle Cart Shopify UltraCart Volusion WooCommerce WP e-Commerce Yahoo Stores |
| Other Integrations | Lime Light NetSuite |
User rating
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Sophie
Terrible
What where the positives?
They are less expensive than other companies, but the service is reflexed in the price
Any negatives?
They are always running between three and five days behind meaning that your items don't even leave for a week. The only way to get your item to leave quickly is to pay for the expedited shipping, or the item will not even be picked from the shelf for a week
Summary
Absolutely terrible, the worst customer service and slowing processing times.
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nighto
Just Terrible
What where the positives?
N/A
Any negatives?
N/A
Summary
The start was me asking a lot of questions about how everything worked trying to get a sense of how much this would cost to correctly price the service myself and it would not cut into my profits. The first terrible thing is in stead of having someone manage your account and help you with everything they have you talk to 3 different people in different departments, none of whom are really helpful, they seem to be but they all give contradicting information that eventually led to a lot of mistakes on their part. First thing I find infuriating is their lack of ability to just give a simple quote, this was the service needed for delivery of 60 packages, no more, they market themselves for "small or medium" companies, and this very much qualifies as a small company wanting to deliver 60 packages. They give you a table of prices and "let" you do an estimate yourself (thus taking no responsibility for their lack of action). I talked about my estimate with my account manager who sent me to another person that told me my estimate appeared to be correct so we could move to the next phase which is creating an open account with them where you let them charge you openly as they see fit. They told me that they needed about a week to deliver all products, but they recommended leaving the account open for at least 4 weeks, they told me that the only charge would be for storage and since there were only small packages the fee would be small. I agreed, and let the 4 weeks past. Finally all the products were delivered and they sent me an invoice. Now the first quote was for 500 USD they told me that should be more than enough for all deliveries. I deposited 700 in hopes that it would cover the extra expenses and some extra money in case they needed it. the quote was for an extra 120 US (on top of the 700 which were already spent) when asked for an explanation they said simply that the weight I had calculated did not account for their choice in package protection which led to an increase of about 3 dollars per package (which seemed plausible). Then I saw that they were charging 22 USD per week of "account fees" which is basically answering a message weekly. Finally I told them that i wanted to close the account, they advised to leave it open another full month because they thought they might get some items back and it was best to have the account open. (this was another 88 USD of course which they did not say). I told them i wanted to close it anyway, to which they sent a final invoice of 80 USD of "miscellaneous" which i told them to explain and they said that it was a fee for closing the account. Which in the whole process they never told me about. All in all it was hell, from an initial budget (which they approved) of 500 USD I ended up paying DOUBLE the amount, basically because they wanted to. I have dealt with many fulfillment companies and this is by far the most misleading and plain crooked company. I am sorry i can not recommend them to anyone, I hope people go to more professional businesses and stay away from this one.
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sales939
Great Service for Start Ups
What where the positives?
N/A
Any negatives?
N/A
Summary
I read a couple of very negative reviews and I would like to disagree. We have been using efulfillment service for almost 3 years, ever since we started off, and they have been very good and have made life simple for us. Let me first give the positives: - Friendly, honest service staff (contrary to the other reviews) who reply promptly. You need to email them, they have a Zen Desk process so all emails get replied to in a timely manner. - Their IT team integrate with pretty much every shopping cart. This is not common. If you have a shopping cart, and they don't have an integration yet, they will set it you for you. - Their web based dashboard is very well designed and easy to use. - Their order process works very well, you can tell they understand the details of the distribution business. Notifications go out to customers when an order ships with a tracking number, returns are managed correctly, damages are dealt with. You can re-ship orders easily when an order gets lost without having to fill in a new form manually. - I have not had a significant problem of shrinkages. We have over 35,000 units in stock and damages/losses are under a dozen/month. Totally normal. - They wrap items very well indeed. We have purple shampoos which have a tendency to leak, items from China in fragile plastic bags, and items in tubes which are easily damaged. They bubble wrap and put in dividers into cartons and items arrive in very good condition. - Amazon orders get shipped in priority and we have had zero problems with Amazon service levels as a merchant. They even qualified us for seller prime. Negatives: - Our own website sales are de-prioritized and ship out the next day. This is very slow in this day and age. - Because they are based in Upper Michigan, an order off our website to California (taking into account the next day shipping issue above) can take up to 8 days. This is not good! - Zero discount on shipping as volumes grow. - It is true that dock to stock time is variable and it can be frustrating not knowing when your stock will hit inventory. They have got better recently, but on average they take around 1 week to turn around. We import our stock in from Europe, so we keep buffer inventory of up to 3 months, so a 1 week turnaround is not a big deal for us. Worse than the time is that we just don't know if the truck has actually made it. There is no automated ticket issued when the stock arrives and is sitting around waiting to be de-palletized and received into inventory. So until the stock has been added into inventory, you literally don't know what has happened to it, unless you call up the trucking company and ask for details of the delivery. - A few picking errors from time to time, and in 3 years around 3 times when there was a major breakdown. In each case this was an IT issue. My conclusion: In spite of the negatives, an excellent service for start ups. But you will need to look elsewhere once your volumes reach around 1000 orders/month and especially if you sell a lot off your own site. Also if you want to give your customer an average level of shipping to the West Coast, you will need to make alternative arrangements. We are currently looking for other service providers, as our orders have reached 1000 orders/month and we need to improve service times to stay ahead of the game.
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Web Ventures LLC
Slow Restocking, Slow Fufillment, Missing Stock, Dishonesty
What where the positives?
N/A
Any negatives?
N/A
Summary
We have been using eFulfillment Services since December of 2012, and it’s been a roller coaster of late shipments, missing inventory and being constantly lied to by staff members. This company has an extreme lack of accountability, often changing its operational guidelines to suit whatever internal issues they’re having. When we first started using Efulfillment Services it was not as bad as it is now however, the previously mentioned issues have just gotten a bit out of control. So much so, that we have and continue to suffer financials loss due to their negligence. Our problems first began with shipments being sent out late. We would advertise our shipment times in line with that of Efulfillment Services but for whatever reason, shipments would be shipped late. Even those that were to be shipped using an expedited service as defined in their client agreement. Very often when we would contact them about a shipment that was not shipped when it was supposed to, we would get nothing but lies and excuses. It’s just not fair to us or our customers who pay for their orders to be shipped on time. eFulfillment Services takes our weekly payments on time with no grace period but feels that they cannot deliver the services we’re paying them for. Another problem we’ve been having is the adding of new inventory received. To give an idea of how long it takes for new inventory to be added once received by eFulfillment Services, we sent a new shipment that was received on 3/14/2017. Today is 3/24/2017 and our inventory has still not been added. In the meantime, we’ve lost several sales having to refund our customers due to not having the inventory available for shipment. This is not the first time this has happened, and we’re pretty sure it won’t be the last. The most recent issue we’ve been having with eFulfillment Services is inventory coming up missing on numerous occasions. Due to the nature of our product lines, we suspect it’s some sort of internal theft. Every time product comes up missing, we’re asked to provide a receipt proving the wholesale cost we paid for the item. We still lose money on missing inventory because eFulfillment Services only reimburses the wholesale cost for the inventory. We pay to have inventory shipped to us and then we have to pay to have it shipped to eFulfillment Services. It’s not right that a business client must suffer financial losses due to the negligence of eFulfillment Services. We chose eFulfillment Services based on the reviews posted on the internet however, now we believe those reviews are not from real clients. They simply can’t be. No serious business would give this company a 5 star rating. The lack of professionalism and inability to deliver services they’re being paid for makes eFulfillment Services a company one should definitely not consider, especially if your shipments are time sensitive. Whether your selling from your website or any of the several market places on the internet, expect to suffer revenue losses with eFfulfillment Services. We pondered writing this complaint however we’ve been left with no other options after trying to address these issues on several different occasions. Hopefully things will change but in the meantime we’re seeking another service provider. UPDATE: On April 3rd a member of EFS senior management contacted us in regards to our complaint. After discussing our issues and concerns, EFS has assured us that the issues mentioned in our complaint will be addressed accordingly. We will revisit this review for possible amendment in the future.
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Fresh And Alive
Xtremely Slow Stock Check-in Times, Significant Lost Stock
What where the positives?
N/A
Any negatives?
N/A
Summary
My company has been using eFulfillment Service for about 5 years now, with volume of about 3,500 parcels per year. We've had our ups and downs with EFS over the years. Early on EFS had very slow ship times, with regular ground shipments usually taking 2 to 3 days to ship after they received an order. Fortunately in 2016 they greatly reduced that to same day shipping on ground orders that came in by early morning. Important for anyone linking their shopping cart to EFS (almost everyone), EFS does not offer two-way XML data exchange with carts, so your cart can send them orders, but they cannot send stock data back to your cart to keep stock levels current in your shopping cart. However, you can hire a coder to write a custom XML app to do so if you have the money. Historically, we had very little loss from stock missing or theft, but that increased significantly in 2016, with losses apparently from theft or loss of stock, not accounting errors. EFS does pack shipments well so we had very few losses from damaged shipments. Stock accounting errors have become more frequent, with significant losses that we had to haggle over being reimbursed for, and having to provide documentation to prove quantities shipped to them. While ship times improved greatly and satisfactorily in 2016, stock check-in times became ridiculously slow, with a week to 10 days to check in our stock being the norm since August of 2016. We were initially told these very long check-in times were due to the pre-holiday season approaching, but those excruciatingly slow check-in times have continued into March 2017. EFS is apparently undergoing some sort of staffing crisis, because they have given up on even responding to our requests to get our shipments to them checked into stock. I'm looking for a new fulfillment service since we can't afford to plan on 10-day dock to stock times. I suspect EFS is too small to compete effectively with the big boys. I also suspect many of the glowing 5-star reviews elsewhere were planted by EFS, and small businesses who don't have much experience with fulfillment services.