The last three artist direct signed items I received in the mail were actually products I cancelled and received refunds for, but these companies (three different ones) handling the merch shipped them anyway. This prompted me to revisit the question we've often alluded to on this forum: Why are artist merch vendors so bad at handling things?

This is not mean to to be a gripe session (again) but rather a thread for anyone who had any actual insight or behind the scenes knowledge of these companies' operations as to why they struggle with everything from order fulfillment to adequate packing to simple communication. Is it understaffing? Poor management? Production issues from lowest bidder manufacturers? Culture?

While so many things in the process of ordering signed merch can go wrong, it's clear that much of the problem lies in poor operations and customer service on the distribution side of things. But why exactly this is so widespread is a bit puzzling, Damn few of these companies seem to handle things particularly well, which is strange given how simple many of the product liens are.