Shipping is ridiculous sometimes

BuddytheReow

BuddytheReow

Moderator
I needed some pickup height adjustment screws and my local home center doesn't carry the size I need. F^&* Amazon since I don't want to give Bezos any more money. So, I turned to StewMac. I've only ordered from them once before. Screws are $0.50 a pop, so I put 4 in my cart for whenever I need some next time. I chose the cheapest shipping option they had. $13.

Seriously?! 4 f*&(ing screws that cost $2 plus tax and you're going to charge me over 6x the price for shipping? I would think they would put it in a small padded envelope and slap a tracking number on it to save on shipping costs. Nope. They put a small baggie into a box the size of a 1590X enclosure with all that packing paper. Took over a week to get to me here.

What a waste of money and packing materials. I would have been just fine with this in a standard envelope with no tracking number. F%#&ing 0.008 lbs cost $13 to ship!!!

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StewMac is infamous for their lame shipping costs, but they are an eBay vendor too and in at least some cases that brings a better result, IME.
 
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Yep. Seems that way with everything. I've recently been ordering bolts and such from Bolt Depot. Not sure if they'd have anything like this though as I've never looked. Shipping is typically less than $5 and it ends up being cheaper than me trying to find stuff locally.
 
I think I'm more annoyed with the size of the box it came in and the extended shipping time. PPCB orders only take a few days, not a week.

If there was a cheap, slow option like with Tayda I wouldn't have been as irked.
 
The cheapest option with shipping included to the US for specialty sized screws is on AliExpress hands down. Tarrifs might change that eventually but anything below M8 I don’t even bother looking for US retailers. There’s a shop on Ali called “Screw Home” that I usually look at first but there’s plenty of options. I’ve also had good luck with bolt depot in the US as mentioned by @Blooze
 
I'm quite surprised by all this. I find shipping, particularly in the USA, to be excellent value and I love receiving huge boxes in the mail.
 
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HamishR said:
I'm quite surprised by all this. I find shipping, particularly in the USA, to be excellent value and I love receiving huge boxes in the mail.
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It's cheaper to get packages sent from China to my home in the US than to be sent from across town. Which always boggled my mind since when it comes from China, it still has to get to my town first.


(this might change with new tarrifs)
 
I think I've ordered from Stewmac twice, or maybe just once. Not only is the shipping outrageous the prices on the parts they sell is ridiculous too. I have two screw holes in my SG that I need to fill and try to paint to blend in so I need to buy a cherry red nitro paint pen from Stewmac, but I keep putting it off because I'd rather buy more stuff to add to the box rather than pay $10 shipping on a $15 paint pen.
 
This reminds me of ordering hardware from McMaster Carr. The order was for 1 box of each of #2 sheet metal screws in 1/4" and 1/2" sizes. Neither box cost much. Each box was shipped from a different warehouse, with a UPS charge for each. Over $60 in shipping for less than $10 in hardware.
 
For a little while I was buying my Celestion speakers from Stewmac and getting them shipped to me in Australia. They have a membership scheme which is now $59.95 (I'm sure it was significantly less before) where you get free shipping, even to Australia. Of course when you put the speaker in your cart and go to check out they proudly announce that shipping is free as long as you don't mind waiting indefinitely and for only $20 they can get it to you express. Still, their prices were as agood as I have seen for Celestion speakers and the shipping was affordable if you bought a few over the year. It turned out to be by far the cheapest way to get speakers for me.

Of course it's different now.

In Australia we have Radio Spares, which I assume is the British company. They have very fast free shipping. But their prices are generally outrageous. Now that we have Mouser in Australia it will be interesting to see how competitive they will be. I suspect they won't be cheap but will offer stuff I have trouble finding anywhere else. My go-to for a lot of amp stuff is Antique Electronics. They have really stepped up lately, offering a much larger range of parts at reasonable prices. Excellent range of knobs for pedals, for example, and also a really good and affordable range of the sorts of capacitors you want for amps. Probably because of Mr Psionic Audio I am using more Vishay caps, both electrolytic and poly and their prices are great and they have them in stock! The only downer is their shipping prices which I guess are out of their control. Shipping to Australia frequently costs around the same as the parts I order. It's REALLY frustrating.
 
HamishR said:
In Australia we have Radio Spares, which I assume is the British company. They have very fast free shipping. But their prices are generally outrageous. Now that we have Mouser in Australia it will be interesting to see how competitive they will be. I suspect they won't be cheap but will offer stuff I have trouble finding anywhere else.
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Here in the US Mouser used to do $4.95 Priority Mail shipping for under 13 oz. packages and Fedex 2 Day for $8, 9, or 10 bucks for quite a few years. That just jumped up to $13 for my last order, Priority Mail is currently 8 bucks but not showing a minimum weight now. They are my primary vendor for many many components and I can interact with an actual human quickly and efficiently almost always. Antique Electronics in their various forms have been getting my business for a few decades now and are often my go-to for tube based stuff.

Tayda is a last resort for me, but there are certain carefully vetted things I might buy from them every year or two. Not a fan of their enclosures and UV printing at all though, but happily I have someone nearly local to me who does nice work and since pedals are a fairly low priority thing for me I don't mind spending whatever it takes to get what I want a few times a year.
 
BuddytheReow said:
I needed some pickup height adjustment screws and my local home center doesn't carry the size I need. F^&* Amazon since I don't want to give Bezos any more money. So, I turned to StewMac. I've only ordered from them once before. Screws are $0.50 a pop, so I put 4 in my cart for whenever I need some next time. I chose the cheapest shipping option they had. $13.

Seriously?! 4 f*&(ing screws that cost $2 plus tax and you're going to charge me over 6x the price for shipping? I would think they would put it in a small padded envelope and slap a tracking number on it to save on shipping costs. Nope. They put a small baggie into a box the size of a 1590X enclosure with all that packing paper. Took over a week to get to me here.

What a waste of money and packing materials. I would have been just fine with this in a standard envelope with no tracking number. F%#&ing 0.008 lbs cost $13 to ship!!!
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Your attitude is great! I agree 100%, but your reasoning is wrong. JB will loose money on every small business. The costs are far higher than his profit. We all could drive him into bankrupt, if we order only small things.
 
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