Lulu Direct,70 reviews
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The app is very glitchy and there are major issues with their fulfillment and printing of the books. Their site has a production time of 3-5 business days which is false advertising. When emailing them about how it is taking much longer, now on 12 business days they respond saying that they're aware of it and that I should tell customers that it is a custom printing job for each and every book and that should keep them happy. This is before the shipping even occurs. I'm only in the stage of printing out proofs and am realizing I likely will not be able to use this for print on demand and dropshipping directly to customers due to the insanely long print time. This is not a sustainable model for print on demand and more so a better model for printing in bulk and holding inventory.
Thank you for your feedback.
Our average production times throughout the year are estimated at 3 to 5 business days. However, production times can vary based on factors such as order volumes, national holidays, seasonal changes (tax season, the start of the academic school year, etc.), or even uncontrollable/unexpected delays that may arise at the print facility (machine maintenance, inventory shortages, COVID, etc.). And while production times will always be a factor, with print-on-demand you will not have to manage product inventory or manually ship each order. That means you can spend less time on the logistics of running your business and more time growing it.
I have set up Lulu with a product. It sent 2 orders!! And then it STOPPED WORKING. My customers have been waiting for weeks because Lulu's integration is garbage.
Everything about this app is easygoing but the processing and shipping are insane. I am better off ordering in bulk in processing the orders myself.
Have tried multiple times to get this app working and all I have to show for it is a lot of frustration and wasted time. Absolutely the WORST app experience I've had so far. Incredibly disappointed, expected much better from such a major company.
We apologize for any frustration you may have experience while trying to set up our app. Please reach out to us through our support page or email us directly at “integrations@lulu.com” and we would be happy to assist you with setting up our app.
当我按下选择把我嘘之一ks with lulu app, the full list of books doesn't show up. If I put the whole title, the book doesn't show up. The paperback cover takes too much time to process as well, because of the size requirements. There should be a format that integrates the front image and allows to add text to the back image. This would allow a much faster process. The advantage for me with Lulu is the creation of hardcover books. Not many platforms allow me this. I wanted to sell hardcovers through this app, but it's just too complicated to create the hardcover cover, and then go through a system that doesn't work properly. I don't even really know how much I am paying per sale, because that price shown includes production only, and not shipping. P.S. I am not trying to do more with the app that it was designed for. Unless you mean accelerating what already exists and expect the full list of books to appear in the search engine. As for my last email it was meant to improve your business, and has nothing to do with this review. It's disappointing when help is transformed as a justification to nullify an argument.
Thank you for your feedback, we appreciate you bringing your issues to our attention. We’re sorry to hear you had such a frustrating experience trying to get your store set up properly and connected to your books, that's not what we like to hear. After more research and conversation, it appears you're actually trying to do more with the app than it's currently designed for. We appreciate the the ideas presented in your last email and will consider some of them for the next version of our app. Your business means a lot to us, so if you ever have additional feedback, please don't hesitate to reach out. Best of luck with your books!
I use Lulu xPress for about two years now. It worked well until several months ago and it became a disaster. Apparently there is 0 quality assurance made at the printing facilities. I have numerous copies of my book delivered with pages empty of content. The support is always helpful and sends a replacement, but in last several weeks I had several clients who received faulty product even on second and THIRD attempt. Unfortunately it damages my relationship, since I really look unprofessional when customer receives a faulty product, then the replacement arrives faulty again and the next one again. It also affects my income since I have to refund such customers. I asked for clarifications when such issues can be fixed but didn't receive concrete answers. If you have an alternative consider avoiding Lulu.
I launched a print on demand store for stationery. And have had a horrible experience in terms of the length of time it takes for orders to be delivered in addition to customer assistance. The "estimated time frames" are merely suggestions. The real dates of arrival could be more than 2 weeks past then... Also, they never actually say how long production takes. however, once they list your order's status as "in production" they refuse to allow you to cancel your orders. Would definitely look into other print on demand partners for books
We are a print-on-demand company. All products are printed after an order has been placed. Factors such as volume, weather, and pandemics will affect production times, which is why we cannot guarantee specific production windows. We do provide a 1 hour cancellation window for all orders. Once production begins we cannot cancel the order because resources and materials have already been dedicated to the job and would need to be thrown out. Cancelling an order after production begins is also very disruptive to the production process and may affect other orders around it causing print defects and further delays to the production process.
If you or anyone has any questions or concerns about our production times or processes, please reach out to us and we will be more than happy to discuss it.
Update: 2/5/2021. I am no longer using this app. I had a lot of calendars ordered that took months to arrive, and only did get printed and shipped because I contacted customer service relentlessly. I have entire threads of emails. Customer service did help get the orders fulfilled after customers started complaining, and after MANY emails back and forth. The calendars were really nice, and I would have preferred to keep using Lulu but not at the expense of my customers' business. Update: I really wanted to come back and change my original review saying things were resolved, but I can't. After multiple attempts, I finally got a human on the phone, who I thought was helpful. They did enable my product in my store so that customers could order, which they did, however, it has been 20 days now and the order has not even gone to production because the original issue was not fixed. I am stuck with $400 in sales, no product, angry customers, and still, no answer when (or if) they will get their product at the height of the holiday season. If I could give zero stars I would since they have done nothing to assist nor can I get any product. I made a calendar for my Shopify store, it shows up in my store but you can't order it, I keep getting an error message when attempting to place an order. I have contacted their customer service, no response. I contacted Shopify, they confirmed it was not on their end and contacted Lulu xPress's customer service copying me on the email and I did get an email back several days later. I sent screenshots as requested and since then nothing. I have tried for 10-days to resolve this and nothing. I will move on to another app and start over.
We apologize for any frustration you experienced while setting up our app. We see that you are currently fulfilling orders through the Lulu xPress app. Your success is very important to us and we want to support your business as best we can. We have reached out to you, but have not heard back. If you are still in need of assistance, please let us know.
Many if not most of the reviews here are terrible, especially considering that this is a company that more or less boasts that they are "Masters of the Print on Demand" book printing Universe.
Um, I don't think so.
Many here are complaining of really poor customer service as well as comically mishandled orders. Well, I haven't gotten yet to the mishandled order stage, but I have received really poor customer service.
I have been STUCK for about ten days now not getting too much done with LuLu although lately I've been able to forge ahead and make some progress mostly thanks to my own efforts. I finally managed to get one book accepted by the Lulu "platform." With AMAZON, everythng was INSTANT, worked the first time, and took mere minutes, not days. All this time I've been emailing and getting mostly ignored. Incomplete answers provided every 3 to 4 days, at best, with total radio silence in between.
I told their support via email about four hours ago that I had had it and that I was going to be leaving this one star review.
More radio silence.
THEY.DO.NOT.CARE.
They're Masters of the Universe, remember? sarc/
Hi John. Thank you for writing a review, we sincerely appreciate you bringing this issue to our attention. We’re sorry to hear you had such a frustrating experience trying to get in touch with our customer service team, that's not what we like to hear. However, after researching the case files, it seems you were reaching out during advertised Holiday hours, which is why communication was slower than normal. File formatting issues can be a pain sometimes, especially when you are using a file output from another publishing platform, but we hope you were able get your products created. If not, please check out some of our formatting tips HERE: https://xpress.lulu.com/faq#setup. We've listed our available hours clearly on our Contact Us page and on social media, and if you ever need assistance at another time, you can consult our knowledge base and FAQ page in the interim, and we'll reach back out to you first thing the next business day. Your business means a lot to us, so if you ever have additional feedback, please don't hesitate to email us.
(SECOND REVIEW - 9/21/2020): Production times are over a month. I have customers complaining daily, asking where their orders are. This is not an issue of the USPS or Fedex, this is a production/manufacturing issue that Lulu has faced since we began working with them.
We get the same old runaround from customer service about how they are working on it. We have been working with Lulu for about a year now and it has just been painful from start to finish.
If you're serious about starting a print-on-demand product, look elsewhere. It will save you a lot of headache in the long run for your business. Do not be fooled by Lulu's flashy interface and design. It's all smoke and mirrors. Behind the scenes it's a mess.
(FIRST REVIEW - 4/27/2020): If you are planning to start a business around selling books, be vary wary before jumping in head first with this app. There are issues with the app as well as print quality control.
We have been using the Lulu Xpress App for about 4 months now to print thousands of books. Our library consists of about 90 titles and we have spent thousands of dollars with Lulu.
The app is riddled with bugs and issues. It is finicky and breaks easily. Many times it feels like wrestling a bear to get the app to do what it is supposed to.
Whether you're trying to view your orders or trying to upload/update a book, a new error or bug will present itself. The app requires various workarounds to avoid these bugs, but regardless a new one will pop up in its place, bringing production to a halt. "Internal Server Errors" seem to never go away. We hold our breath every time we launch the app, cringing at what broken mess we're going to run into.
This is not something that a business can afford to deal with on a weekly basis. As it stands, we have not been able to access the app at all in over a week.
We have been working with customer service to solve these issues. This is an additional problem in itself. The line of communication is not efficient. You will be in contact through an email support ticket chain. With this chain, your customer service rep will relay or mediate your issue to a "developer" who is "working on the problem."
It is just flat out inefficient and we expected more support and competency considering the volume we are producing and future plans of growth for our business.
他们的防守,客服回复是否公平ly quickly. They do try and it seems they are sincere in their efforts to help in whatever way they can. Unfortunately, they're dealing with a broken app.
The backend development of this app has a long way to go. The errors and bugs shouldn't exist to begin with.
Because we are in this far, we will continue using Lulu for the time being, in hopes that they are able to iron out these issues soon. I will update this review once they do. Until then, I would not recommend this app.