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Suppliers are really irking me right now.


bfroberts

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I don't know where this post should go really, but I am sick and tired of not receiving everything I order.  
 

The last 3 orders (3 separate suppliers) I have placed have been incomplete.  #1 was missing wick stickers.  They sent those a few days after I contacted them, so not a huge deal.  #2  I ordered lip balm base with a bunch of other little stuff and got a call the next day that the lip balm base was out of stock and what did I want to do.  I told them to send the rest of the order and refund the difference.  Which they did, but they refunded the product price and failed to adjust the shipping cost, which irks me.  #3 is a bunch of small odds and ends for a few projects I want to do with my granddaughter this weekend, and the M&P embeds I ordered are missing.  Now I've got to hope they get here by the weekend or order from someone else so they'll be here in time for her visit.  

 

What annoys me about this is that none of these things were proprietary.  I chose who to order from based on being able to get as many items as possible from one supplier, and that ended up being a big fail.  I am just annoyed as heck right now.

 

I've been buying stuff from suppliers for years and I have never had but maybe one or two missing items in all that time.  All of a sudden, the last 3 orders are incomplete.  Is it just a run of bad luck or are y'all having trouble with orders too?

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Probably just a bad streak, hopefully. I've been ordering stuff lately from different suppliers and everything has been fine except one wax melt mold had a hole due to a staple in the packaging. They are going to refund it or send me another one.

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On 4/15/2019 at 3:24 PM, Laura C said:

Probably just a bad streak, hopefully. I've been ordering stuff lately from different suppliers and everything has been fine except one wax melt mold had a hole due to a staple in the packaging. They are going to refund it or send me another one.

 

They gave me a refund and said I didn't need to return it. That works for me, the mold has other cavities that I can still use. :thumbsup:

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I'm pretty sure some of them are marking up the freight and turning it into a profit center. All the while, these companies tout how "green" and "carbon neutral" they are, and all that bull. I order from two companies in North Carolina. Both of the companies and I are in the same UPS zone. I'm not going to mention the names of the firms, but the UPS freight charges are significantly and routinely higher from one of those dealers than the other company on comparable items. 

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6 hours ago, Quentin said:

I'm pretty sure some of them are marking up the freight and turning it into a profit center. All the while, these companies tout how "green" and "carbon neutral" they are, and all that bull. I order from two companies in North Carolina. Both of the companies and I are in the same UPS zone. I'm not going to mention the names of the firms, but the UPS freight charges are significantly and routinely higher from one of those dealers than the other company on comparable items. 

I believe this also.

 

Trappeur

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This is 100% true..  The one company I order from their Fed-ex rates are almost 35% cheaper than UPS.  Every once in a awhile it comes UPS.. The only reason they do this is because UPS is probably cheaper anyway.  I do not care as long as I get the packages.

 

Many times we pay the retail rate while they pay a discounted rate.

 

It took me a few vendors to figure out who was the cheapest to get wax from, when I 1st started i did not think shipping made that much of a difference.  Now I buy from place that the wax price is a little higher but the shipping is much cheaper.  I have debated driving to buy a big lot but just can not justify the cost.  a 50lb box of wax is always 50lbs.  LOL

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This irritates the dickens out of me too.  A ceramic supply company is the best price per item, but charges outrageously high freight (priced at retail UPS ublished rates). They then ship in regional rate boxes or envelopes. A recent order charged me $24 in shipping for a couple of lbs of stuff. Showed up in a $7 mailer. Will never use them again no matter what. 

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Third time for me something was out of place in an order.  Second from the same company, however, they've been fantastic about taking care of it, so, it's a mild inconvenience, but not a problem.  The shipping would bother me too.  

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On 4/17/2019 at 8:18 PM, Quentin said:

I'm pretty sure some of them are marking up the freight and turning it into a profit center. All the while, these companies tout how "green" and "carbon neutral" they are, and all that bull. I order from two companies in North Carolina. Both of the companies and I are in the same UPS zone. I'm not going to mention the names of the firms, but the UPS freight charges are significantly and routinely higher from one of those dealers than the other company on comparable items. 

Here is a prime example of how I think some companies make on shipping   2 weeks ago I ordered all the colored canning jar lids from Filmore for a presentation and then I realized I never ordered the yellow lid they have in their line of lids.   I have a presentation next week that I need a yellow lid to go on one of the candles.   I called Fillmore and told the girl there what happened and asked if she could help me out and slip the 1 tin lid in an envelop and send to me.   Well long story short, we went round and round and the shipping for 1 lid was 20.00 and change!   I told her there was no way I was going to pay 20.00 to ship out a lid and even when she offered me a 5.00 discount on shipping like they offer that at times I still wasn't going to pay 15.00!  She explained to me it has to packaged a certain way and she didn't want the lid to get damaged or anything.   I even said that if it did get dinged or what ever, it wouldn't bother me as it was for a presentation only.   If she couldn't send out in an envelope, she could have put in a padded envelope and ship out.   Come on, there are many companies that would have charged  me maybe 4,5 or 6.00 to ship out 1 stinking lid, but nope it just wasn't going to happen here.   Now I don't like to knock any companies, but you tell me how realistic is this? huh?...Fillmore is a wonderful company and I have nothing but good to say about them.   Customer service, shipping and products are awesome and I love all about them but lets call a spade a spade!   I was not a happy camper.   So long story short I found and ordered on Etsy the yellow lids and ordered 6 of them and even with shipping and cost of goods, I got them for $6.00 and change being delivered to me.....Sorry Fillmore, I hated to bring this up, but I feel this couldn't have been justified.  

 

Trappeur

Edited by Trappeur
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Something is wrong with that girl. Her boss would have told her to stick the single lid in a small padded envelope and give it to you for free. They could have mailed it 1st Class Mail for no more than 2 bucks.

Edited by Quentin
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It’s hard for me to get mad at an employee for following their orders. 🤷🏻‍♀️

 

It all worked out in the end.

12 hours ago, Quentin said:

Something is wrong with that girl. Her boss would have told her to stick the single lid in a small padded envelope and give it to you for free. They could have mailed it 1st Class Mail for no more than 2 bucks.

It’s not $2 though. Orders cost real $ to process. How many people throughout the offices and warehouse and shipping would have had to stop what they were doing to find a lid, pack it, some how enter it into the order processing and inventory system to generate a shipping label and tracking, and ship it. At least 4 people, maybe more depending on how big the facility is.  If the lid gets damaged, like we know it does, then another follow up order is needed along with a ticked off customer.   “free” orders cost companies loads of $.  Multiply that by how many requests for freebies come in all the time and now we have another company closing or spiking prices to compensate. 

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51 minutes ago, TallTayl said:

It’s hard for me to get mad at an employee for following their orders. 🤷🏻‍♀️

 

It all worked out in the end.

It’s not $2 though. Orders cost real $ to process. How many people throughout the offices and warehouse and shipping would have had to stop what they were doing to find a lid, pack it, some how enter it into the order processing and inventory system to generate a shipping label and tracking, and ship it. At least 4 people, maybe more depending on how big the facility is.  If the lid gets damaged, like we know it does, then another follow up order is needed along with a ticked off customer.   “free” orders cost companies loads of $.  Multiply that by how many requests for freebies come in all the time and now we have another company closing or spiking prices to compensate. 

I understand all that about the cost. But I've had. Several times already I've had candle suppliers send me one single lid or something. The person who answered the phone either went to the warehouse to get it or had someone do it.

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5 minutes ago, Quentin said:

But hey! It's worked out for Amazon🤣

 

Yes worked out for amazon, and the convenience to the customer,  BUT I charge up to 20% more on Amazon than I do on my website and I know that is true for many others as well.  The average consumer just doesn't realize. 

 

 

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1 hour ago, TallTayl said:

It’s hard for me to get mad at an employee for following their orders. 🤷🏻‍♀️

 

It all worked out in the end.

It’s not $2 though. Orders cost real $ to process. How many people throughout the offices and warehouse and shipping would have had to stop what they were doing to find a lid, pack it, some how enter it into the order processing and inventory system to generate a shipping label and tracking, and ship it. At least 4 people, maybe more depending on how big the facility is.  If the lid gets damaged, like we know it does, then another follow up order is needed along with a ticked off customer.   “free” orders cost companies loads of $.  Multiply that by how many requests for freebies come in all the time and now we have another company closing or spiking prices to compensate. 

Doesn't make any difference.....you can't tell me that 15.00 or 20.00 to ship one lid is acceptable....Plain ludacrest!   I didn't ask for anything free...but an "honest" price on the shipping and this certainly wasn't regardless...A padded envelope would have been just fine.  An order is an order whether it is for 1 lid or a case of jars.....

 

Trappeur

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14 hours ago, Quentin said:

Something is wrong with that girl. Her boss would have told her to stick the single lid in a small padded envelope and give it to you for free. They could have mailed it 1st Class Mail for no more than 2 bucks.

That's what I would have done in all honesty.   It's one of those things that you call the cost of doing business.  But like I said I wasn't looking for anything free just a fair price for shipping.   Quentin, you and I think along the same lines....

 

Trappeur

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13 minutes ago, Trappeur said:

That's what I would have done in all honesty.   It's one of those things that you call the cost of doing business.  But like I said I wasn't looking for anything free just a fair price for shipping.   Quentin, you and I think along the same lines....

 

Trappeur

 

What they need to do is institute another shipping alternative for small orders. So the customer doesn’t have to choose between buying one lid for a shipping cost of $20 or go somewhere else. 

 

@Trappeur went somewhere else when she wanted to buy from Fillmore. If they had an alternative they could have made the sale. 

 

They may not care about small orders, but they could be losing the big orders by not fulfilling the small. 

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And the reverse is true also. The customer could buy more to make the shipping makes sense. 99% of customers seem to have no problem adding impulse items when it’s another vendor.  

 

There’s a thread not too old about figuring out your cost of processing an order. If you had to pay someone in your business to process orders how excited would you be to pay them to send orders that consistently  lose you money?

 

As for “maybe” a little customer becomes a big customer... A little anecdote. I used to offer trial sizes. After three solid days of making and shipping trial size orders and having zero profit guess who turned off trial sizes. It did not stop my big orders one little bit. In fact the added time made it possible to offer more and profit more.

 

Had I stuck with allowing tiny orders I would have closed up shop years ago due to lack of $. When reflecting that I could have spent my day at the beach and been exactly the same cash wise I became educated. I set minimum order targets to stay alive. Make it uncomfortable to order small, reward when ordering the amount I need to keep in business. Nothing personal. 

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