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.

I hope that anyone else who has found this to be the case in your dealings, will contact McMaster-Carr via their website: http://www.mcmaster.com/ Contact. Be sure to ask that your comments be forwarded to someone in upper management and to a VP of Sales. Be sure to express your thoughts in a polite, business-like manner.

This is a sad comment that am making -- their company has been a pleasure to buy from for the past 10+ years. But now their operation seems to have been turned over to the IT dept and/or bean counters. The sales desk/phone people are as helpful and efficient as always, but unfortunately, their "customer service" philosophy is limited to taking orders. Evidently they have no influence on how the rest of the company is run.

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. This is true whether ordering online or by phone.

2. This is fine for small dollar or infrequent orders, but not acceptable for routine purchases.

3. Our experience is that cards are kept with a fairly low limit ($1-$5) because that it takes only one well-meaning but out-of-control employee to sink a project by excessive use of his card.

4. However, if your employees have a reasonable limit ($2-$10K), then the company must now monitor the balance weekly and make mid-month payments just to keep the balance under the card limit and keep on good standing with the card issuer.

5. When you are in a major project, you have to spend to much time keeping track of your credit card balance when you should be spending time on keeping the project under control.

6. I have talked to various McM-Carr people and have gotten nowhere. Our account is over 10 years old and, like all our supplier accounts, is always current.

7. On a different issue.... we have places 4 orders in the past 2 weeks -- all by credit card (as required). Two of these orders were shipped to addresses in other states that we never heard of.

I hope that they will get enough feedback from their customers to pull the plug on the impersonal bean-counter attitudes and return some reasonable customer-oriented management to the company.

Thank you for reading.

Boycott McMaster-Carr










Hmm...that sucks,I just ordered from them for the first time this week.
Paid by CC,so far everything seems dandy..As long as my package arrives
in one piece,I'll be happy.