Comment by talkingtab
3 years ago
Another vote for McMaster-Carr. It is not like they are great, they just are not stupid or frustrating or annoying at all. I don't know of any other websites that meet that relatively simple standard.
Perhaps part of why their website is so good is because they deliver the goods. They follow through. Ever need a 4x8 sheet of copper? It gets delivered to your front door. Sooner than you expect, and at a very fair price.
Yeah. It's kind of like how in chess, many learners study openings and gambits and obscure checkmates, when the low hanging fruit is just learning to spot and avoid blunders.
MMC is mostly about not making the mistakes everybody else makes, which puts it near the top even before you consider what they do well.
I think everyone knows what the "mistakes" are, it's just that its en vogue to "hate your customers" the way amazon and similar companies do, racing to the bottom to squeeze money out of them with dark patterns instead of just charging more for good service
Amazon doesn't hate their customers nor do they love their customers.
They clearly are indifferent to customers except to the point required by law, or as needed to keep the cash flowing in.
It costs money to do the things that MMC does and Amazon prefers volume and revenue over the margins that MMC can command by providing quality service.
McMaster's pricing and structure also self-selects for the right kind of customer -- customers who are willing to pay a reasonable premium for quality, speed, and customer service.
+1 for "self-selects" for the right kind of customer. Self-selecting is interesting. Mine was a need, not a hobby, it was not a luxury. And like the original post pointed out, there was no need to convince me to buy. So I wonder if there needs to be another Amazon, one that it focused on those customers who "need" something?
Also, my own experience was that I did not pay a "premium". I really did need 1/2 sheets of copper on a regular basis. I could get small pieces at a premium. I could get larger sheets by driving for a hour or ... I could pay about the same total cost or less and get them delivered to my door... This was not limited to a few items. I needed plastic bags, about quart size. Again I got just functional bags - not shoddy at all - at a very reasonable price. The same things at amazon would have been a) not functional or b) impossible to find among all the shoddiness.
> It is not like they are great, they just are not stupid or frustrating or annoying at all.
Sad to say, comparing them to most other sites where you try (or attempt to try -- yes, often it is that bad) makes a case for saying, yes indeed, they are great!
I like buying auto parts from RockAuto. Their website is dead simple to use. They have nice features like good/better/best, showing the most popular item of that category for that car, an icon for OEM parts, and another icon that shows items in the same warehouse as the item in your cart. So when you can't decide between a dozen brands of sparkplugs, you can pick one that is both OEM and is in the same warehouse as the air filter you needed so you only have to pay for one shipping cost.
I used to. Then I bought a part that didn't fit (a switch that obviously didn't have the right number of terminals), and the return process turned me off.
I still check them though as they often have good enough parts for a lot less than OEM prices. Though I also still go to the OEM when I get tired of third party parts that don't work (after the switch issue above I went to my local auto parts store - the switch fits but doesn't work, I'll see what the OEM part does. Rock auto was $8, local store $20, deal $140 - but I trust the dealer switch will work for another 20 years)
I find that to be the case for many "industrial" (for the lack of better word) online stores. E.g. for plastic containers, https://www.usplastic.com/ is similar.