I signed up with Doba around 07/08 for their so called '7 Day Free Trial' just so I could see and compare their 'wholesale prices' and saw that even Wal-Mart, Target, and many other online stores had better prices than Doba. So on the third day of the trial, I called to cancel my membership, so the rep asked why, I told him about the prices then he said 'oh well we can't compete with those stores.
Wish they would post that up on the sign up page to save me from all this mess.
The Doba rep said he will cancel my membership but will not refund the $199 that they charged to my credit card during the trial period. To this day my account is still open and I'm still disputing this charge with my credit card company. They are not really a drop shipping company as they do not stock a thing. Everything they have on their site is shipped from various stores across the country. And when that store is out of stock, so is Doba. I should of read up on them at RipOffReport and BBB before signing up with them, but lesson learned. I recommend anyone steer clear from Doba.
Dobo is pretty much a brokerage for dropship products, but they are not alone there. Plenty of so called drop shippers are simple brokerage platforms cashing in on demand.
Some people call these a middle man operation, but quite often they are one link further down the chain than a middle man. Unless you are drop shipping products direct from the manufacturer, you will at least be drop shipping from a middle man operation (brokerage).
It's hard enough to make good income from these types of brokers because you are paying their profit in your sales. Of course there are situations where bigger brokers come along and promote smaller brokers drop shipping products, now it gets really difficult!
The product is being sold by the manufacturer for their profit, then their broker/wholesaler/drop shipper, call them what you want, puts their mark-up on. Then the big broker, who you are drop shipping from, ads their margin to the calculations, there isn't much meat left on the bones for resellers.
If you are determined to try and make money from drop shipping you have to eliminate as many links in the chain as possible, and that means buy from as close to the actual source as you can. It's not a guaranteed method to make money from drop shipping, but it will maximise your potential to make margin without everyone else feeding of your retail sales.
One really important thing to remember when it comes to drop shippers, their not there to be your friend, or to look after you. They are there to make money from you because they know it's easier to do that than to try and sell the stuff themselves.
Seriously, after you cut through all the crap about drop shippers. if someone has a product that is going to make a fortune in sales, do you really think they are going to sell it to you cheaper than what they could sell it for themselves?
