On Fri, 30 May 2008 22:51:10 +0000, Guv Bob wrote:

I am sad to say that our experience has been that McMaster-Carr has
changed for the worse in the last few weeks. And I don't see any reason
to think that it will return to the friendly, efficiently-run company
that it has been for the prior 10+ years that we have been buying from
them.

{snip}
1. As you probably already know, McMaster-Carr has purged many of its
customers' accounts in good standing, and is now requiring long-term
customers to purchase by credit card only.
{snip}

This is something you are going to have to learn to live with.

The credit crunch and the Fuel Oil crunch is going to infest all phases
of business life for the next generation. McMaster-Carr will not have
the dollar resource to make 45 day loans or even 30 day loans to their
customer's purchases. The money people (those with the Oil profits) will
not extend McM-C the credit.

It will all be credit cards soon. Let the banks and foreign investors
collect the money, I guess.

However, I agree about the problem of employee use of credit cards for
large dollar purchases. See it happen myself. The only way to go is a
long piece of red tape no one will follow until someone is fired for not
following the red tape procedure on credit card purchases. Small
companies just may go broke because of out of control credit card use by
employees.

Don't blame McMaster's for the credit crunch. Don't matter how long you
have been a customer with them or MSC, or Grainger (sp?) Purchase Order
number, or Blanket Order number buying is going to something like a V-8
engines in family cars soon.

If you think you have problems now, just wait until you find out about
the future of the procedures your accounting dept will impose on your
credit card purchases for projects in the future. Plan working about 3
to 4 hours unpaid overtime each week to process the new paper work.

(Aside: the paperwork will be needed by the Auditors of the Accounting
Dept, it's not the Acct. Dept's fault. The Auditors won't give your
company a green light without some new procedures in place.)

Phil

P.S. I will now get down off my little soap box. It needs to be recycled.