Slow order fulfillment

[Sharon Patterson]

Is anyone else having a hard time getting products ordered from Wholesale supplies plus and Make your own buzz? It is sometimes taking way over three to four weeks to get an order filled. Usually if I get frustrated and send an email miraculously the order will be filled within a day or two. Should I just expect to wait that long for my order?

 

[Obsidian]

No, that isn't normal. It shouldn't take more then about 3 days to fill and ship a order.

 

[MrsZ]

I've been ordering from them for a couple months. It always takes 13-16 days for my orders to be shipped. I know that there are many, many more people that have to wait far longer, like you have.

 

[dibbles]

They have gotten very slow to ship. Here is a very recent discussion about this: https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/wholesale-supplies-plus-shipping-delays.85355/

 

[lenarenee]

In the years I've ordered from WSP, not a single order was shipped faster than 8 days after ordering - many were longer. Most orders were placed during sales; WSP used to have sales only once or twice a year, not like they do now.

 

[Catscankim]

WSP has been discussed a lot here lately with their slow shipping. It took almost a month just for them to ship it out, then it arrived in only two days.

I won't order from them if I need something quickly.

Hopefully somebody there reads posts here and sees that they are pissing off the entire community.

 

[rdc1978]

I've always had a slow ship time with WSP. I'm not sure if they are hoping more people will pay the $15 to "cut the line" or if they are just super busy.

Last time when I got a box from them I had literally forgotten I placed the order! It was a great surprise!

 

[danyah]

I had a soap box order that was three weeks late, so I called them. They told me that the reason for slow delays was: 1) they bought Make Your Own and were combining their warehouses, and 2) they are super low on warehouse workers and they're having trouble hiring anyone, down to only 2-3 people at a time fulfilling orders. They were super nice to me on the phone and shipped additional boxes to me within 48 hours rush at no charge. So now if I know I'm gonna be low on something almost 1-2 months out that's when I order.

 

[Sharon Patterson]

After sending an email asking where my order was it shipped, but one item was back ordered. no communication from them at all. I waited over a week and sent another email asking them to cancel the item that was back ordered and refund my money. Surprisingly my back ordered item was received in the warehouse and is now going to be shipped. I sent them a note and told them about another company that I deal with that sends an email that the order is received, sends an email that the order is pulled for shipping, sends an email that the order has shipped. All of this within two to three days. They sent a response that kind of said it's not their fault. I usually get my soap boxes from WSP, that are actually Crafters Choice boxes. As it turns out Amazon sells them as well. So although I ordered quite a few from WSP, I ordered 100 from Amazon that will be here in two days. I hate giving Bezos my money but I need the boxes and with Prime the delivery is timely. So I am pretty done with the entire WSP group which includes Make Your Own Buzz, Rustic Escentuals and Crafters Choice.

 

[Vicki C]

After sending an email asking where my order was it shipped, but one item was back ordered. no communication from them at all. I waited over a week and sent another email asking them to cancel the item that was back ordered and refund my money. Surprisingly my back ordered item was received in the warehouse and is now going to be shipped. I sent them a note and told them about another company that I deal with that sends an email that the order is received, sends an email that the order is pulled for shipping, sends an email that the order has shipped. All of this within two to three days. They sent a response that kind of said it's not their fault. I usually get my soap boxes from WSP, that are actually Crafters Choice boxes. As it turns out Amazon sells them as well. So although I ordered quite a few from WSP, I ordered 100 from Amazon that will be here in two days. I hate giving Bezos my money but I need the boxes and with Prime the delivery is timely. So I am pretty done with the entire WSP group which includes Make Your Own Buzz, Rustic Escentuals and Crafters Choice.

With you on all this. There are other vendors.

 

[DeeAnna]

I can't speak about WSP, since I never order from them.

But I do know many companies are slower to ship nowadays. One of my main suppliers for my small business (not soap or B&B related) used to ship most of my orders within a week or so, but my sales rep told me they now need an 8 week lead time.

Another main supplier still ships my orders fairly quickly as long as the items are in stock, but they do a lot more backorders nowadays, because they can't get supplies from their suppliers. I have been waiting on several backordered item for about 6 weeks now.

This situation is not likely to change for at least the next few years from what I'm reading. Welcome to the new normal.

edit: One of the things I have learned for myself, however, is to keep my customers informed with timely email updates and do my best to answer questions as they come up by email or phone. Even if a customer has to wait for one of my made-to-order items (usually takes 2-4 weeks), nearly all of them seem reasonably okay with a wait since I do my best to keep them informed about their order status. (There's always an exception to every rule, and some customers are hard to please no matter what I do or say.) I get the impression that's one area where WSP is falling down on the job.

another edit: It's good to know Save On Citric is now a part of WSP. Now that I know that, I won't be ordering from them either.

 

[Vicki C]

I can't speak about WSP, since I never order from them.

But I do know many companies are slower to ship nowadays. One of my main suppliers for my small business (not soap or B&B related) used to ship most of my orders within a week or so, but my sales rep told me they now need an 8 week lead time.

Another main supplier still ships my orders fairly quickly as long as the items are in stock, but they do a lot more backorders nowadays, because they can't get supplies from their suppliers. I have been waiting on several backordered item for about 6 weeks now.

This situation is not likely to change for at least the next few years from what I'm reading. Welcome to the new normal.

edit: One of the things I have learned for myself, however, is to keep my customers informed with timely email updates and do my best to answer questions as they come up by email or phone. Even if a customer has to wait for one of my made-to-order items (usually takes 2-4 weeks), nearly all of them seem reasonably okay with a wait since I do my best to keep them informed about their order status. (There's always an exception to every rule, and some customers are hard to please no matter what I do or say.) I get the impression that's one area where WSP is falling down on the job.

another edit: It's good to know Save On Citric is now a part of WSP. Now that I know that, I won't be ordering from them either.

Agree - it may be the new normal - but customer communication could still work. When an item is not listed as out of stock, I will order it - WSP lets you know in the packing slip (eta tracking info email actually) that an item was out of stock. I posted a long whiny chronology of my recent WSP saga. Wholesale Supplies Plus shipping delays
I won’t be going back.

 

[MelissaG]

Is anyone else having a hard time getting products ordered from Wholesale supplies plus and Make your own buzz? It is sometimes taking way over three to four weeks to get an order filled. Usually if I get frustrated and send an email miraculously the order will be filled within a day or two. Should I just expect to wait that long for my order?

More l like everyone is taking a long time to ship. Even places that are normally fast like Nurture. It's getting incredibly aggravating. I'm getting tired of being told "shipping time is this amount of days" but learning it's a total lie when it takes a good two weeks for ANYTHING to be shipped from ANYONE.

 

[lenarenee]

Well, I’m old enough to remember when we had only catalogs to order from and it was a minimum 6 to 12 weeks to receive an order….be it books, clothes or whatever.
So, I remind myself it could be worse.

 

[TheGecko]

I learned early on that the faster you need something, the longer it takes to get it.

 

[Carly B]

Hubby has a saying--"Faster, Cheaper, Better - pick two." It actually can be applied to most things. In general (and there are exceptions)--
You want something fast and good, it won't be cheap
You want something fast and cheap, it may not be the best quality
You want something cheap and good, be prepared to wait

I find Nurture to be an exception for what they sell, but limiting their focus to molds, micas, and FOs means you'll still need to go elsewhere. I can pretty much accept the "pick two" theory, but what annoys me is places like Brambleberry, where the quality may be good, but it's not fast and it's not cheap.

 

[TheGecko]

Hubby has a saying--"Faster, Cheaper, Better - pick two." It actually can be applied to most things. In general (and there are exceptions)--
You want something fast and good, it won't be cheap
You want something fast and cheap, it may not be the best quality
You want something cheap and good, be prepared to wait

I find Nurture to be an exception for what they sell, but limiting their focus to molds, micas, and FOs means you'll still need to go elsewhere. I can pretty much accept the "pick two" theory, but what annoys me is places like Brambleberry, where the quality may be good, but it's not fast and it's not cheap.

It would be great wouldn't it...if there was just a single place that met all our hearts and desires, but that's an impossibility because not everyone has the same heart and desire so imagine the size of the building to house all of that?!?

Now that RE's shipping costs have gone up and I can get all my base oils/butters locally, I will be exploring more companies like Nurture.

 

[SideDoorSoaps]

If I don't need something right away I will order from WSP. I placed an order almost a month ago that I'm supposed to get today. I've ordered three times from Soaper's Choice and got my items within the week. Same for ordering from Bulk Apothecary - ordered and it took weeks to get it but order from NDA and get it in about a week. I rarely order from Bramble Berry since they are completely across the country from me and it always takes foreverrrrr.

 

[glendam]

I am quite surprised. I placed an order with Wholesale supplies yesterday, about three items that totaled around $50. I just got a notification of shipping. They usually have shipped things in 7-10 business days in the past, and with recent discussions and Black Friday, I was going to forget about this order for at least a month. i didn’t buy the skip the line either so I am happily surprised.

 

[dibbles]

I haven't ordered from WSP recently, but I do check the weekly sales. I've noticed that the processing time they are showing at the top of the page is 1-3 days (or was a week or so ago). I hope they have resolved their issues, but I will need some consistency to feel comfortable that I will get my order in under two weeks, and still won't be surprised if it takes a month. I like the variety of products that they carry so I can pick up several things in one order.