Arka Avis 52

My manager asked for branded boxes for an upcoming product launch in 4 weeks. I spoke with a number of manufacturers and none were able to meet our ambitious timeline.

Arka came through, made me look great, and the launch was a success!

I use arka packaging for unbranded stock boxes. They are one of the cheapest eco-friendly sources that I was able to find.

Tldr: Do not use this company. They wasted 8 weeks of our time and money, lost our order, refused to take ownership, blamed everyone but themselves and used our phone number from our order [without our permission] to contact us about another customer’s lost order that was sent to us instead of the correct destination.

2 stars because we received a refund and the samples were nice, but overall the experience was a nightmare and a huge waste of time and money.
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Where to even start with the full story. I guess I will start with a positive because there is only one. The samples we ordered from Arka turned out beautiful. Mainly because of the design we created, but the print quality was also good so we will give them that. One important thing to note [something we didn’t find out until our boxes were lost] is that Arka is just a nice website interface - they outsource everything.

Despite taking 7 weeks to receive our 10 sample boxes & not receiving a tracking email until 3 days after our samples arrived (I will also mention that the “tracking” email did not include an actual tracking number or link - we should have taken that as a sign), we decided to move forward with placing our full order.

We placed our full order on January 4, 2021.

On January 25th we received an email saying my order was preparing to ship & some questions to answer to coordinate delivery. We responded immediately & followed up a few days later asking for a tracking number at which time Arka responded saying providing a delivery date was not possible and once they had tracking information available they would provide it to us.

On February 7th (10 business days after being originally contacted about our order being prepared to ship) we followed up again with Arka because they had still not provided a tracking number.

Finally, after having to loop in the owner to our email, we received a tracking number on February 11. The tracking number stated our estimated delivery date was February 11 - the same day we received “tracking” but the link Arka provided had NO tracking history. So, we had no idea where our order actually was.

We noticed a freight logo on my tracking so we reached out to that company directly. That company told us they handed over the shipment to another company so we called that company only to find out that due to a logistical error, our shipment had been placed on hold & had been sitting for TEN days. Something we could have looked into sooner if Arka had provided a tracking number, but instead we lost another 10 days.

We contacted Arka again at which time they told us it was a weather/COVID delay, which we knew was a lie since we had email proof stating the logistical error from their vendor causing the shipment to be cancelled and ultimately put on hold.

A million calls and emails later [with no help from Arka], we were finally able to release the hold on February 15 & received a new ETA of February 24-26 (TWENTY BUSINESS DAYS after our order allegedly shipped) .

On February 22, after our tracking hadn’t updated in TWENTY days and no one had contacted us to coordinate delivery we recontacted the freight company who told us our order was lost (after spending HOURS on the phone).

We wasted EIGHT WEEKS, thousands of dollars on boxes, thousands of dollars on the delay of our launch of our business and thousands of dollars in rent/ingredients for our kitchen space because we were fooled by a pretty website interface and chose to work with Arka.

The crazy part is this story doesn’t even end with OUR lost boxes.

On March 10th we received hundreds of someone else’s boxes. Not wanting someone else to go through what we did, we personally reached out to the other company to tell them that we received their boxes.

After them not hearing back from Arka, we personally contacted the printing facility Arka uses and coordinated a pick up for redelivery.

THEN at 5:30pm on a Friday after we didn’t respond to an email from Arka because we had already scheduled a pick up for their other customer, we got a text from Arka’s owner blaming FedEx for the lost boxes.

Not only do we find it completely inappropriate for him to use our phone number from our order to contact us without our permission, he still didn’t accept responsibility for the lost order - he blamed FedEx. FedEx didn’t lose the order, Arka did! The other company’s order was delivered to exactly who it was addressed to… US.

In full transparency, the owner contacted us again on March 18th (2.5 months after we placed our order & a month plus after losing our order) offering 50 free boxes and blog post to make it up to us. We declined his offer because it was too late to try and “make it up to us” as we had already encountered too many losses because of Arka. We also did not feel comfortable with Arka promoting our business when we do not support theirs.

I love a company with character! I had a lot of issues with them during the holidays/ covid and was VERY upset, but I got a personal call from the founder of ARKA recently to talk things out and see what they could do to make things better and that really meant a lot. Communication is so important and to see a company who's owner is taking bad reviews or negative feedback to heart and trying to make it better is a huge WOW.
It shows that they are a company that really cares. Also the quality of their boxes are BEAUTIFUL!!

Great quality packaging, pricing, and amazing customer service.

Easy. Simple. Fast. Plus competitive pricing. Switched to Arka from a different supplier and won’t go back.

Ordered packaging in a pinch during covid. They were up front about logistics timing. Plus they caught an error on my artwork file during proofing. I have now used them for stock and custom printed packaging. I will be staying a repeat customer.

Submitted an order in early Oct and was told it would ship in 10 days. It still hasn't printed and customer service seems to have no idea why or when it may. They have refused to refund. We were told our boxes would print the week of 10/18 and they are still in que. We wanted these items for holiday shipping and have sourced elsewhere (they were able to perform). Arka wants no accountability and taking money and not delivering is unacceptable. There are too many small businesses like us that need vendors who can perform when paid. Watch out as they seem to be taking money and not delivering. Must hope people wont dispute, review, and file legal claims.