Man its hard to walk from them when I get things I use all the time like
way oil cheaper than anywhere else, but sometimes they do things that
bug the crap out of me. I have a cash account with them. If I have the
money I buy what I want. If I don't then I just get what I need right
now. Works great. I run my whole business that way. The only thing that
can ever get behind is the credit cards, and I can budget them if I have
to. It also makes my book keeping dead simple. Except for a few
reports I could do all my books once a year at tax time.

The problem is I keep getting these invoices and calls from MSC saying I
owe them money. They say they didn't charge me for everything on an
order so of course the new invoice or packing slip (who pays from a
packing slip) amount doesn't match any of my orders. So I have to track
it down, find the real correct order, then track down my CC statement
for that period and cross check them. I suppose I could just "trust"
them, but I don't. Ever since I had a card compromised minutes after
making a purchase from them with it I just don't. So I have to track it
down and spend my time checking out their mistake instead of doing my
job. Making parts.

WAH! Boo! Hoo! You might say.... well maybe I'd agree if it wasn't me,
but earlier this week they called me about one of their mistakes from a
year ago. I never heard a word about it until earlier this week when
they called. What a pain in the ass.

So I keep looking for alternatives. I never had issues like this with
Enco. In fact I never did much business with MSC until they assimilated
Enco.

On Thu, 8 Feb 2018 11:52:12 -0700
Bob La Londe wrote:

snip
So I keep looking for alternatives. I never had issues like this with
Enco. In fact I never did much business with MSC until they assimilated
Enco.

Have you looked, compared prices from Wholesale Tool?

I placed an order there years ago for a few odd items. They had decent
prices, came the next day via UPS. Not surprising, came from the
Detroit location. But I've had other places just take there sweet time
getting the order picked and onto the shipping dock...

http://tool.wttool.com/nav/cat2/Grease,Oil&Lubricants/0

I see they have way oil, don't know if it's a good deal or not. Not
something I buy. I just use chainsaw bar oil when needed. Mostly as a
rust preventative. If I had more, pricey equipment I might reconsider

They send emails out from time to time with percent off specials. If
you want I can give you a heads up next time I get one.

--
Leon Fisk
Grand Rapids MI/Zone 5b
Remove no.spam for email

On Thu, 8 Feb 2018 11:52:12 -0700, Bob La Londe wrote:

Man its hard to walk from them when I get things I use all the time like
way oil cheaper than anywhere else, but sometimes they do things that
bug the crap out of me. I have a cash account with them. If I have the
money I buy what I want. If I don't then I just get what I need right
now. Works great. I run my whole business that way. The only thing that
can ever get behind is the credit cards, and I can budget them if I have
to. It also makes my book keeping dead simple. Except for a few
reports I could do all my books once a year at tax time.

The problem is I keep getting these invoices and calls from MSC saying I
owe them money. They say they didn't charge me for everything on an
order so of course the new invoice or packing slip (who pays from a
packing slip) amount doesn't match any of my orders. So I have to track
it down, find the real correct order, then track down my CC statement
for that period and cross check them. I suppose I could just "trust"
them, but I don't. Ever since I had a card compromised minutes after
making a purchase from them with it I just don't. So I have to track it
down and spend my time checking out their mistake instead of doing my
job. Making parts.

WAH! Boo! Hoo! You might say.... well maybe I'd agree if it wasn't me,
but earlier this week they called me about one of their mistakes from a
year ago. I never heard a word about it until earlier this week when
they called. What a pain in the ass.

So I keep looking for alternatives. I never had issues like this with
Enco. In fact I never did much business with MSC until they assimilated
Enco.


If these billing "mistakes" are costing you more than they save you;
then it sounds like you could be better off taking your business
elsewhere - at least until they can fix the problems at their end.

--
Email address is a Spam trap.

On 2/8/2018 2:45 PM, Bill wrote:
On Thu, 8 Feb 2018 11:52:12 -0700, Bob La Londe wrote:

Man its hard to walk from them when I get things I use all the time like
way oil cheaper than anywhere else, but sometimes they do things that
bug the crap out of me. I have a cash account with them. If I have the
money I buy what I want. If I don't then I just get what I need right
now. Works great. I run my whole business that way. The only thing that
can ever get behind is the credit cards, and I can budget them if I have
to. It also makes my book keeping dead simple. Except for a few
reports I could do all my books once a year at tax time.

The problem is I keep getting these invoices and calls from MSC saying I
owe them money. They say they didn't charge me for everything on an
order so of course the new invoice or packing slip (who pays from a
packing slip) amount doesn't match any of my orders. So I have to track
it down, find the real correct order, then track down my CC statement
for that period and cross check them. I suppose I could just "trust"
them, but I don't. Ever since I had a card compromised minutes after
making a purchase from them with it I just don't. So I have to track it
down and spend my time checking out their mistake instead of doing my
job. Making parts.

WAH! Boo! Hoo! You might say.... well maybe I'd agree if it wasn't me,
but earlier this week they called me about one of their mistakes from a
year ago. I never heard a word about it until earlier this week when
they called. What a pain in the ass.

So I keep looking for alternatives. I never had issues like this with
Enco. In fact I never did much business with MSC until they assimilated
Enco.


If these billing "mistakes" are costing you more than they save you;
then it sounds like you could be better off taking your business
elsewhere - at least until they can fix the problems at their end.



Its hard to quantify. What it costs me is time. I know what I was
worth as a technician when I ran my contracting company, but its hard to
quantify my time as a small specialty machine shop operator. I know
what my machine time is worth, but my personal time is hard to nail
down. Its not costing me any money. In fact every time it was legit.
I owed it, but as a one man shop I do begrudge having my time wasted to
check it out. I waste enough time all on my own.

On 2/8/2018 1:19 PM, Leon Fisk wrote:
On Thu, 8 Feb 2018 11:52:12 -0700
Bob La Londe wrote:

snip
So I keep looking for alternatives. I never had issues like this with
Enco. In fact I never did much business with MSC until they assimilated
Enco.

Have you looked, compared prices from Wholesale Tool?

I placed an order there years ago for a few odd items. They had decent
prices, came the next day via UPS. Not surprising, came from the
Detroit location. But I've had other places just take there sweet time
getting the order picked and onto the shipping dock...

http://tool.wttool.com/nav/cat2/Grease,Oil&Lubricants/0

I see they have way oil, don't know if it's a good deal or not. Not
something I buy. I just use chainsaw bar oil when needed. Mostly as a
rust preventative. If I had more, pricey equipment I might reconsider

They send emails out from time to time with percent off specials. If
you want I can give you a heads up next time I get one.


Yeah, I wouldn't mind seeing their specials and sales fliers. Their
regular pricing is just ho hum.

On Thu, 8 Feb 2018 16:08:49 -0700, Bob La Londe
wrote:

On 2/8/2018 1:19 PM, Leon Fisk wrote:
On Thu, 8 Feb 2018 11:52:12 -0700
Bob La Londe wrote:

snip
So I keep looking for alternatives. I never had issues like this with
Enco. In fact I never did much business with MSC until they assimilated
Enco.

Have you looked, compared prices from Wholesale Tool?

I placed an order there years ago for a few odd items. They had decent
prices, came the next day via UPS. Not surprising, came from the
Detroit location. But I've had other places just take there sweet time
getting the order picked and onto the shipping dock...

http://tool.wttool.com/nav/cat2/Grease,Oil&Lubricants/0

I see they have way oil, don't know if it's a good deal or not. Not
something I buy. I just use chainsaw bar oil when needed. Mostly as a
rust preventative. If I had more, pricey equipment I might reconsider

They send emails out from time to time with percent off specials. If
you want I can give you a heads up next time I get one.


Yeah, I wouldn't mind seeing their specials and sales fliers. Their
regular pricing is just ho hum.
Greetings Bob,
I have been finding more and more of the supplies I need for my shop
from Amazon. Cutting tools included. Since I use Amazon Prime the
shipping is great. Almost always free and I get stuff in two days.
Since I'm on an island next day air means sometime after 5:00 pm the
next day. UPS next day comes on different trucks thanthe regular
stuff. So the next day for me really isn't useful. But Amazon usually
uses the mail. And it comes earlier. And I get stuff on Sundays. In
the mail. Sundays! And the MSC web site sucks. It is really slow.
Since MSC gobbled up ENCO, J & L, and several other competitors
their pricing and service have suffered. So I look for stuff I need
soon on Amazon and for stuff I don't need in a hurry on eBay.
The last straw for me was when I ordered some ER collets from MSC.
Some German brand. They were supposed to be quite accurate. When they
arrived the packaging looked an awful lot like some packaging a friend
of mine recieved when he bought some Chinese ER collets on eBay. It
turned out that the "German" ER collets were no longer being made in
Germany but were being made in China. So I checked the runout of my ER
collets to my friend's ER colets and they were showing the same
amount. The quality was not as good as they used to be. So paying the
high MSC prices was not OK. Paying the eBay prices was OK because they
were a fifth of the price.
MSC did not mention that the ER collets were from China, just that
they were imported. But I expected a German company brand product to
be imported.
So I'm pretty much done with MSC. I get my way oil from a local
supplier as well as my coolant. The way oil is NOT Vactra. I stopped
using Vactra years ago when it clogged up the way lube system on my
Bridgeport mill. I switched to some stuff called "Hydroclear". It is
now called TCS Slideway Lubricant. Made be Phillips 66. Still the same
stuff though. It doesn't slowly clog the filters in the way lube
systems on my machines and resists washdown from coolant way better
than Vactra. It doesn't pollute the coolant as bad either.
Eric

On Thursday, February 8, 2018 at 8:27:10 PM UTC-5, wrote:
for stuff I don't need in a hurry on eBay.


. Paying the eBay prices was OK because they
were a fifth of the price.
MSC did not mention that the ER collets were from China, just that
they were imported. But I expected a German company brand product to
be imported.

Eric

Making a quick check on AlliExpress is often worth while.

Dan

On Thu, 8 Feb 2018 16:08:49 -0700
Bob La Londe wrote:

Yeah, I wouldn't mind seeing their specials and sales fliers. Their
regular pricing is just ho hum.

You can sign up for their mail list on the home page and view current
fliers:

Current catalogs and fliers:

http://www.wttool.com/index/page/sta...e_publications

Email Club sign up:

http://www.wttool.com/index/page/sta...sletter_signup

I found it interesting that they quickly dropped me from their print
mailing list even though I had ordered from them. However Enco use to
send me their specials flier every month even though I had never
ordered from them. Not all that special though, kinda like HF, basically
the same stuff every month with different page layout...

I'll let you know next time they email me.

--
Leon Fisk
Grand Rapids MI/Zone 5b
Remove no.spam for email

On Thu, 8 Feb 2018 11:52:12 -0700, Bob La Londe
wrote:

Man its hard to walk from them when I get things I use all the time like
way oil cheaper than anywhere else, but sometimes they do things that
bug the crap out of me. I have a cash account with them. If I have the
money I buy what I want. If I don't then I just get what I need right
now. Works great. I run my whole business that way. The only thing that
can ever get behind is the credit cards, and I can budget them if I have
to. It also makes my book keeping dead simple. Except for a few
reports I could do all my books once a year at tax time.

The problem is I keep getting these invoices and calls from MSC saying I
owe them money. They say they didn't charge me for everything on an
order so of course the new invoice or packing slip (who pays from a
packing slip) amount doesn't match any of my orders. So I have to track
it down, find the real correct order, then track down my CC statement
for that period and cross check them. I suppose I could just "trust"
them, but I don't. Ever since I had a card compromised minutes after
making a purchase from them with it I just don't. So I have to track it
down and spend my time checking out their mistake instead of doing my
job. Making parts.

WAH! Boo! Hoo! You might say.... well maybe I'd agree if it wasn't me,
but earlier this week they called me about one of their mistakes from a
year ago. I never heard a word about it until earlier this week when
they called. What a pain in the ass.

So I keep looking for alternatives. I never had issues like this with
Enco. In fact I never did much business with MSC until they assimilated
Enco.

Find the CFO's email at MSC and send him a copy of your post. He
might be interested. You're likely not alone in feeling that way.

Also consider a ledger via OpenOfficeCalc/Excel spreadsheet, so it
won't take you much time to track down any problems.

--
Stoop and you'll be stepped on;
stand tall and you'll be shot at.
-- Carlos A. Urbizo