AnnoyedCustomer

Rip off to sell on - forced to compete to have the lowest price, all the money from the sale goes to Amazon, and the selling platform is awful in general. I had holiday settings on, and Amazon was still setting products to customers! Buy from Australian businesses directly, not this nasty drop-shipping American junk!

I ordered some mugs from an Australian supplier, a third of them had crooked printing. I sent SIX pictures through to customer service. They specifically requested a less detailed picture of the product with all affected products in the same image. I sent this through. NO REPLY. I reopened the thread and made another request about the the first request being ignored. They then told me to sod because no SKU was provided. My account doesn't have any SKUs provided by Printify. They also had the audacity to make the first case as solved, thus removing the images from the message that they requested. The thread in the image was never resolved - they closed it without resolving it. This has been dragging on for 21 days. Disconnecting it from my account and referring to them as being in breach of Australian consumer law.

This used to be a good business where authors could make money (I have been a customer for over 10 years); however, over the last few years, it has slowly morphed into nothing more than a printing network that wants you to send books to bookstores- for a loss (you can go into debt if the bookstore doesn't sell them. This is an antiquated practice dating from WWII - a time when print-on-demand publishing (which is more expensive!) didn't even exist and there was a major war. Is this justified today? POD printing is so much more expensive than traditional printing, and no one is bombing the book stores, so it is unwarranted and exploitative. This problem is much worse than you think, and I will explain it in detail. The main business that stocks your books is Amazon - Amazon orders your books at a huge discount and then destroys them or ships them back (in some locations, you are forced to select the 'destroy' option), and you pay for all the unsold copies, the postage, and the printing. Here's the kicker: You can publish through Amazon for significantly less cost. Amazon only prints books when they sell, so you can't be driven into debt. In other words, Amazon is taking advantage of all IngramSpark customers, and they let them do it to drive up your printing costs. In other words, if you print through IngramSpark, you are not only exploited by IngramSpark, but also Amazon. Isn't book returns a wonderful practice? What inspired me to write this was the order of 30 books from a prestigious politician, and encountering the equally vile customer service, wherein they don't bother to answer you in time to make orders, again leaving the customers to hemorrhage money. One only needs to read the 'canned comments on this page....which are exactly the same....to see that the customer service is non-existent unless you pay for that too. And then there is the latest scam...pay hundreds of dollars to have your book advertised on a Facebook page, when for the same amount of money, you could build your own page and run it yourself!

Firstly there is a major safety issue - a swimming pool gas heater (cost $8,000!) at risk of exploding and catching fire in close proximity to electrical equipment, and thus a serious threat to life and property. Astralpool launched a product recall on this, stating that a technician would be in contact to repair this in five days. It's now almost three months later and no technician has contacted me, despite repeated attempts to get Astralpool to sort this out.
At one point the staff on the phone even told me point blank that there are no technicians or parts available to carry out the repairs. In my next round of communications with Astral Pool they told me my case had been prioritized and that a technician would contact me in a couple of days. Three weeks later and still no contact from anyone, technician or otherwise and I still have a dangerous gas heater outside. The company obviously does not have the capacity to repair the heater since three months has elapsed since the date the claim was submitted, and they won't refund or replace. I just keep getting told that I have to wait for a technician to contact me - which isn't happening. To make this matter worse, I have $100,000 worth of pool and spa equipment I can't use because it doesn't work properly without the gas heater being turned on. And I can't turn it on in case it explodes. Obviously this situation is rather dire, and I have begun to take legal action against Astralpool. I have been informed that their exploding gas heater is not only a health and safety legal violation, but also that the lack of support for a dangerous product is against Australian Consumer Law. So be wary of this company, the Department of Consumer Affairs itself has advised me to legal action.