We are looking at buying a business that sells the majority of its products through drop shippers. I am concerned about having someone else send out the products to my customer and then perhaps having to deal with returns. What has your experience been with drop shippers?

We have used drop shippers in several of our businesses. Our experience has been for the most part positive. When we run into a business that does not provide good service we drop their products very quickly.

If drop shippers provide bad service they get "dropped" so for the most part they are pretty good. The bigger challenge is communication and returns. Hopefully you have a shopping cart that automatically sends out a note to the drop shipper and they automatically send you a note so you can respond to customer requests. You have to be careful about the return policy for example it would be very confusing for a customer to have different return policies for multiple items so you may want to keep it consistent but make sure that your suppliers have the same guidelines as you or you could end up paying for a lot of returned merchandise.

We have had problems with returns with drop shippers. It becomes a cumbersome process to get a call from a client they ship it back then you have to contact the drop shipper and make sure it is in their timeframe. The other concern I have is that although the drop shippers say they will not do this is they now have your clients name and address and they can use it in their marketing efforts.

Drop shippers are a way of life on the web. I would try to find reputable dealers and stick with them I think you will find that you will not have any problem with the vast majority of them.

The best advice I can give you about dropshippers is to use a few as possible. Select dropshippers that have a large product inventory because everytime you add a dropshipper you add complexity. If you can focus your sales on a fewer number you will also be able to negotiate a larger commission.