McMaster Carr Order

[Racinbob 11,045]

I’m sure a lot of you folks deal with McMaster Carr. They have tons of cool stuff. Early last week I was going through some old threads looking for information on a 5714 PTO spring for my 500 Special. If my aging gray matter serves me right I believe it was Buckrancher that mentioned a 9433K111 was a great replacement. I went ahead and ordered them. They come in a three pack. I did this on Tuesday and later that day got an email that they shipped. Outstanding! So, Wednesday morning I go to Ace Hardware and pick up a few things. Oh, oh…..my card was declined at checkout. I paid in cash and went home and called the card company. They saw suspicious activity and locked the card until they talked to us. A hassle but I love the way they keep tabs on things. Sure enough, there were two charges totaling over $300 that were fraudulent. Card gets cut up. The same thing happened to me less than two months ago. They stopped those two as well as the McMaster charge. I immediately called McMasters customer service and told them what happened and a new card was on the way. They said yes, the card was declined but they had already shipped out the springs. Odd that they shipped before running the card but that’s some sort of speedy service. I assured them that I would call back as soon as the new card arrives and get them paid and they were fine with that. Thursday morning a super duper express stops by with the new card. I call McMaster and get things settled. Later that day UPS drops off a box. Wow! Only two days to get my springs. I open it up to find a packing slip…………that’s it………just a packing slip………..no springs. So, I call them again. I got the same guy that I talked to when I first called them. He laughed and said they must have had a premonition that the card was going to be declined. They immediately sent out a replacement order and I’ll have them Tuesday.

I just thought I’d share that with you. A bit of a hassle and embarrassment standing at the Ace register but all ends well. Outstanding service from McMaster Carr as well as the credit card company.

Oh yea, I'll let you know how the springs work out.

[DougC 2,641]

Things like that only happen when it's something you really want bad. My new Original Cab I bought on sale from Vermont shut down my card and I didn't get any message until New Haven Power Equipment got in touch with me a day and a half later and said it had been declined and to call the number on the back of my card. Almost lost the purchase, they only had 2 left the day I thought I'd bought it.....

[rmaynard 15,428]

I've never had McMaster ship (even an empty box) to me without being paid first. As much business as I do with them, they could cut me a break just once. LOL. Having said that, McMaster has so much stuff and they are fast shippers. Though their prices are not the lowest, they almost always have what I need in stock either in the NJ or IL warehouse, and I get it next or second day.

[squonk 41,036]

I love McMaster. My boss doesn't $$$$$$. He loves Grainger but they are big time rip offs most of the time and sell that Dayton junk. We're supposed to get special pricing. Well we do!  A freeze stat at Grainger is $250 and $149 from Johnstone Supply! 

 

Whenever I need special hardware for my Horses I aways go McMaster.  funny you can call them at 3 pm and next day it's on your dock. Some places I have to deal with take 2-3 weeeks. 

[953 nut 55,090]

Grainger is good for the common run of the mill stuff, but McMaster-Carr is the best for the hard to find things. can't beat them!

[KC9KAS 4,741]

We just used McMaster Carr last week for some parts for "Buck".

Use them and Grainger at work, depending what it is that we need. Great (1 day) service from both companies.

[Abe01 61]

At a shop I used to work at we had a contract with grainger, several times we needed something same day and they actually sent someone with the items.....but there is no beating mcmaster Carr for selection.

[Racinbob 11,045]

Ah yes. WW Grainger. It's hard to beat their service. I owned an industrial/commercial electrical contracting business when we lived in Indiana. While Grainger isn't a supply house set up to furnish a construction contractor they still played an important part in our business. One of our largest clients that some of you may have heard of, Zimmer in Warsaw, IN, purchased a tremendous amount from Grainger. At that time they had two prices listed in their catalogs for all the items. Call it the 'retail' price and then the lower price for the companies that had an account with them. As a contractor I talked to them about a distributorship. Initially they were thinking just the electrical line but I told them I wanted all the lines. They agreed. As a distributor we received monthly price lists via.......get this.....microfiche in the snail mail....that had my distributor pricing. I made an agreement with Zimmer as well as all our clients that I would add our set markup on our distributor price to whatever they purchased and sell for that amount as long as it didn't go over the lower price in the catalog which, of course, they could already buy it for. It was a win/win situation and it was also quite lucrative to say the least. One of the things I loved the most about being a distributor was a special section in the monthly price list. It was a distributor only section with closeouts, discontinued items, etc. The prices just blew your mind. One I'll never forget is when Kohler discontinued the K-series. So the motors got listed in that special section. I bought the K-341 for the 1976 B-80 I converted to a C-160. I don't remember the exact price but I can safely say it was like buying a brand new K-341 today for under $200. To this day I still keep a WW Grainger catalog within an arms reach.

[WHX?? 48,788]

Getting back to your first post Bob, what was the "suspicious activity" that was noticed on the card or how did the frauds get to charge on the card? I know a lot of us here use plastic to buy horse parts and what not so maybe we can avoid your hassles.

On ‎7‎/‎30‎/‎2016 at 5:18 PM, squonk said:

loves Grainger but they are big time rip offs most of the time and sell that Dayton junk. We're supposed to get special pricing. Well we do!  A freeze stat at Grainger is $250 and $149 from Johnstone Supply

I'd have to agree with you Mike being a bona fide contractor I have open accounts with them all but Grainger, while they have excellent customer service, is a little high particularly when I have to retail their products. I do pay less from Grainger or Johnstone than institutions or manufacturers do. Buddy works at Mercury Marine and they use Grainger a lot and pay way more for the same product as I do. When I log into my Grainger account the prices are different from what's in the catalog.  I do appreciate the fact that Grainger knows I have to retail at brick & mortar prices. Kinda the same thing with Fastenal and if I do find a good priced product they kill me on shipping/delivery. I have never had to order from McMaster but I should look into it to see if they have contractor/wholesale pricing and offer open accounts as they do have nice hard to find stuff.    

[Racinbob 11,045]

I agree that retail is high at Grainger. It's better if you have an account set up but, as a distributor, it was typically 50-60% less. Now that they only show one price in their catalog they may be doing things differently. Along the same line I just found out something on Fastenal. I wanted to buy some more full dogpoint setscrews for shifters. They showed them costing $1.31 each online plus shipping. I went their store in Daytona and they were .96 each.

 

Jim, there were two fraud charges on the card. One for something like $3.00 to some charity. That was probably a test. The other one was over $300.00 for computer software from Alibaba. There's really no way of knowing how they got the card number. I don't know what signals the credit card company enabling them to catch a fraudulent charge so quickly but I'm glad they do.

[wh500special 2,160]

Always carry multiple credit cards.

 

Twice while traveling for work I've had a card cancelled between the car rental desk at the airport and the hotel.  Never been a problem since it's usually remedied immediately or - worst case - overnight, but having backups is useful.

 

Steve

[squonk 41,036]

Grainger's pricing in the catalog is such as a contractor, You are supposed to be able to quote a job to a customer using the price in the book as the end user's price. You get a discount so it saves you time figuring a mark up. We are supposed to get their best price but it's still higher than a lot of places. As far as I know Mc Master doesn't have any discount program. We pay what's in the book.

[Racinbob 11,045]

Unless you had the monthly microfiche Mike. Distributor pricing is far below what an end user can buy for. Even a massive company like Zimmer. With them and all my other clients I had an agreement to sell to them at my cost + 10%. That still held the price well below what they could buy for themselves. Zimmer alone did $30-$40k a month by buying Grainger products through me. Add that to the 12-15 electricians I had working in their plants continuously on a T&M basis you can see why they were near and dear to me. 

[squonk 41,036]

This thread is OLD!!! 

 

So @Racinbob did the spring work from McMaster?  I need 1!!! 

[Racinbob 11,045]

@squonk

Wow! I forgot all about tis thread. Yes Mike, it worked. On my 854 as well. 

Edited July 4, 2020 by Racinbob