Reviews

Online Supplier

Drop Ship Design

Physical Location: Seattle, Washington

DropShipDesign.com (also operating DropshipOnAuction.com, Dropship-business.com) started out with a higher initial ranking than they ended up with. They seem to be a solid company with many features, but like most companies we found some things that lowered their ranking. We believe that they are a legitimate business with interest in providing a viable solution for their customers and, in some ways, delivering that value; but their rank did suffered due to a few concerns.

Unique Products - 350,000

One of the very best things about DropShipDesign.com was their large product selection. As best we can ascertain, they are working with around 60 different dropship suppliers. Finding exactly what you’re looking for can be a challenge, but that is to be expected somewhat when searching through so many products.

Product Pricing

With our vast experience researching dropshippers and dropship service companies, we are familiar with several of DropShipDesign.com’s dropshippers and can verify the claim on their homepage that they "DO NOT markup the wholesale price." With research, you should be able to find plenty of products you can sell for a profit.

See below for the Amazon price comparisons:

SKU #	Description	DropShipDesign.com Price	Amazon.com Price	Difference
SE233	Heart Rate Monitor Watch	$60.95	$65.95	$5.00
2350	Sunbeam Heritage Stand Mixer	$110.82	$138.95	$28.13
VE510B	Viewsonic 15" LCD Monitor	$239.38	$229.99	- $9.39

Fees / Trials Offered

DropshipDesign.com offers three main packages:

Dropship Auction Package - $99.99
Dropship Website Package - $149.99
Dropship Combo Package - $199.99

You can add on access to the data feed (tab delimited files) for an additional $149.95.

All fees are for an annual membership. According to the terms of service renewing your annual membership is $67.

They do not offer a free trial. Their terms also state that they don’t give refunds for membership fees. However, they do allow a 5 day cancellation period in which you can get your money back minus a cancellation fee.

Dedicated Support - Yes

They do offer live support, via chat, to get fast answers to questions. They also offer support through an "online ticketing system." Furthermore members can get live phone support as well but that does cost and extra fee.

Their ticketing system gets you a response in 24 hours or less. At times, perhaps due to the complexity of the issue, but we've had responses take a little longer.

They were lacking on a helpful member FAQ or Help section to answer common questions or give information about shipping times or other concerns we had along the way.

Usability

There were a few frustrating issues using the DropShipDesign.com service. The first issue was just logging in to the site… it was probably our fault for being overly eager and not thoroughly reading the welcome email, but we clicked around on DropShipDesign.com for nearly 10 minutes looking for a "log in" link before going back and re-reading the welcome email to discover that to login and use the service, we needed to go to DropShipOnAuction.com. Why the different domains? We still don’t know.

Another issue was that once we were logged in to the service, we still seemed to be subject to all the same promotional content as non-members. The ads in the left navigation were not our favorite, but we found out that they do allow you to turn them off in the control panel which is nice.

Online Ordering - Yes

Once your account is verified, which takes only about 5 minutes on the phone, online ordering is simple and easy.

eBay^® Certifications - No

None.

eBay Integrated Auction Tools - Yes

Dropship Design does provide integrated eBay auction tools that allow you to choose from several different auction templates. Once your auction sells an order can be created automatically with a click of a button. This makes it very easy for members to fulfill on their orders from eBay.

BBB Member - No

DropShipDesign.com is not a member of the BBB. They are a member of Truste.com and Validatedsite.com.

Research Tools / Tutorials Offered - Yes

We found that they do offer a top 100 best selling items list and also have a special deals page when you can find specials offered by the different suppliers.

Instant Access - Yes/No

You get a username and password immediately after signing up. You can log in to your account, browse products, check out wholesale prices, and place orders to yourself. However, before you can start placing orders for drop shipment to your customers, you must complete their verifications process which takes less than 5 minutes over the phone.

Integrated eCommerce Website - Yes

Drop Ship Design will provide you with a website if you sign up for the Website Package that, despite their description, is very "cookie cutter." Your control over your website is limited and includes things like changing banners, changing prices, switching between different templates.

Also, your customers won’t be able to enter you site if cookies are disabled which will make it very difficult to put together a good SEM (search engine marketing) campaign. And your site’s customers won’t be able to purchase anything without registering first.

With a Drop Ship Design website, the good news is you’ll get your store up and running quickly, and you won’t have to do much after that because they process all your orders for you and even run the credit card charges on their merchant account and then cut you a commission check.

In our opinion, you’d be better off signing up for the cheaper auction package membership and then adding the Dropship Feed Package and using the files to populate an e-commerce store that you have more control over.

The following is a small list of sites made using Drop Ship Design’s Website Package:

Accepts PayPal - Yes

DropShipDesign.com accepts PayPal for both membership fees and product sales.

Public Opinion

As with most of the dropship companies in our review, there were many complaints about product pricing that we've given less credence. There were also some complaints relating to their level of service, billing practices, delivery issues, and refund/exchange procedures. Once any company gets big enough, you expect to see complaints as you can’t please everyone all the time. They have taken measures to make sure all of the complaints filed against them with the BBB have been resolved to a satisfactory level, this is promising.

In Business Since - 2004

They have been in business since November of 2004.

Disclaimer: To the best of our knowledge, this information is deemed acurate as of 06/24/2008. We will try to update this information as necessary. If there is any inaccurate data in this review, please send an email to support@dropship-review.com with the correct information.

Helpful Info

DropShip Review Can Save You…

Over $500 in membership fees
Countless hours of time
The hassle of testing each individual service
From making a bad decision

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