We have been using Ship My Orders (SMO) for our fulfillment service on the West coast for over 2 years.
Our West coast fulfillment service *prior to SMO*, messed up orders (eg sent orders out ground instead of expedited- when they were needed by a customer for a job), overcharged us, did not provide 'detail' on their invoices to us, and were going to overcharge us on 'storage' if we didn't move to a new fulfillment center. Additionally, it was difficult to know what we had in inventory at any one time.
Since we have been with SMO - our West coast shipping is pretty much *'lights out'* for us, as we have both our shopping cart
and our Amazon store orders automated to directly feed into SMO. I mention our West Coast warehouse, as we also have an East coast warehouse (we want to provide fast ground shipping to most of our customers and 2 warehouses, while more complex to manage inventory allows us to ship ground in 2-3 days in most of the continental US). Saying that, we are on our '2nd' warehouse on the East coast - the first one suddenly went out of business in Jan 2010, and we had to quickly find an alternative which we did in TN. Our TN warehouse, has 'some automation' but is not at the level that SMO is - so I have to do some parts of our order processing manually for the TN warehouse.
So saying all the above, we have had a total of 4 warehouses, 2 in the past (both were disasters), and the 2 current warehouses, one being SMO. SMO far exceeds my expectations in all ways.
We have online access easily to
1) current orders (that I can enter online, or automatically through a datafeed)
2) current inventory
3) We get my tracking numbers nightly - as well as have online access to them.
4) we get my invoices weekly that are detailed including all costs per order (box charges, customs charges order charges) and tracking number -- so for POs that I have to invoice, I quickly have all the shipping charges to be able to invoice my customers and do not have to wait for a monthly bill (where in my first 2 warehouses had incomplete information for me to use)
Additionally we have small 'strange' requests from time to time, and SMO readily works with us to help out at a small admin fee. They also have support for taking phone orders and a call center, which so far we haven't used but are looking into when we winter outside the US for a few months.
We send a 'few' orders internationally -- and we only send USPS Priority Int'l Mail (6-10 business days) as there is no broker duty at the receiving end as there is with FedEx, UPS and DHL -- the shipper broker fee is an unexpected charge to our customers. Only the customs duty is charged on USPS Priority Mail orders. Also USPS has a shipping table for real time shipping calculations that we can use in our shopping cart. For our Amazon store, we only ship in the US, as Amazon has not provided us an accurate method of calculating the shipping to Canada or outside the US.
SMO 'easily' processes all our International orders -- and again, I can enter these online through a form, or automatically send in via a datafeed from our shopping cart.
So...-- we can only provide the highest of praises to SMO for their services, their focus on quality, their responsiveness and ease to work with. read more