Mouser overcharging on shipping?

[gwhite]

Actually after the lady started to get irritated - I just hung up. The
manager was gone anyways.

You wanted to talk to the manager for a $2 pissing match? Way to think big.

 

[Garrett Mace]

I do have a lot of grumbling about UPS. When I taught on a 1 year

appointment in Minnesota, I shipped all my technical books to the
University from Austin. Some of my books were broken during the
shipment. I had not known it was even possible to break books. I
worked my way through college on shipping docks at several businesses
in Texas, packing, loading and unloading trucks, and I know how stuff
is really handled, and my books were packed just fine.

My daughter went to Pilchuk and shipped some of her hand blown glass
back to me. We saw the driver and were walking to the door. We saw
and heard him throw it, break the glass, and run without ringing the
doorbell.

Amazing. I can't say I've had UPS break anything shipped to me, though I've
seen it happen to friends. Entirely for speed and cost reasons, I use FedEx
Ground whenever possible on heavy packages. The shipping price is sometimes
less than half what UPS would charge for the same package. For light
packages the only way to go is Priority Mail. Unfortunately they just dump
your box on your doorstep, even if you live in an apartment and people might
take the box. I have an arrangement with FedEx; if they receive a package
for me, they will keep it and give me a call to come pick it up. UPS
wouldn't even hear of it, and they never deliver when I'm home. Thankfully
the UPS depot is less than half a mile away.

 

[John Smith]

Normally my orders are between $50-100 (I like to wait a while between
orders to save on shipping) - it's just that this time I accidentally
forgot about something - and they weren't willing to try to change my order
which hadn't shipped yet.

I'd bet DigiKey would not be willing to change, either.

 

[Robert C Monsen]

[complaint about mouser shipping charges]

Michael

Slightly off topic: I made an order to mouser at one point, about $30 worth
of stuff. Turns out one of the resistor values was backordered, so they made
a second shipment the next day, charging me full postage for two
resistors... However, when I complained to their 800 number, they refunded
my postage. Not bad, I didn't actually expect them to do that.

I've also had them call me and apologize for backordered parts (well,
actually parts that were in their catalog, but not available for a month.)

They seem pretty fair to me. Many places have minimums that would have made
you order $20 worth of parts to get them to ship it at all.

Regards,
Bob Monsen

 

[Bob Stephens]

[complaint about mouser shipping charges]

Michael

Slightly off topic: I made an order to mouser at one point, about $30 worth
of stuff. Turns out one of the resistor values was backordered, so they made
a second shipment the next day, charging me full postage for two
resistors... However, when I complained to their 800 number, they refunded
my postage. Not bad, I didn't actually expect them to do that.

I had a terrible time getting Newark to put all my parts for a given PO in
one box. I would get six or seven boxes each with about 0.25 oz of parts
and get dinged for 6 or 7 overnight shipping charges far in excess of the
cost of the parts. I had to holler my way up to a pretty senior manager
before I got it straightened out.

Bob

 

[Michael]

You wanted to talk to the manager for a $2 pissing match? Way to
think big.

not $2. And as I already said it wasn't the money that bothered me - it was
the fact that I had been decieved.

 

[John Fields]

Yeah actually I placed a big order the day before - realized I had made a
mistake - and then called them to change it and they were like "too late -
sucks for you".

---
So, if you were Mouser what you'd do if someons called and said that
they'd ordered something yesterday and wanted to change it would be to
smile and make sure that it hadn't shipped, then call shipping and tell
them to go looking for the package and to bring it to you when they
found it, then enter a new order with the extra $2 worth of stuff in it
and make sure that got out that same day so as not to inconvenience you.
Then, when shipping brought you back the package you'd get into the
system and cancel all the documentation for the first order, including
all the invoicing and shipping documentation, and then take the package
to order fullfillment so they could open it up and put everything in it
back in stock. All for a $2 mistake some moron made...
---

I still point to their website which says "$7.31 to $10.35" for 1 pound.
Maybe they haven't updated that for like 10 years? Whichever way - that is
misleading - and is their mistake.

---
You're an ass. If you wanted to find out what the actual charges were
going to be you could have asked. Short of that, if you want to make
sure that they never 'cheat' you in the future, get an account with
FedEx, or UPS, or anybody you like and when you order anything have
freight charged against the acccount you have with them. It ain't
rocket science...

 

[Michael]

[complaint about mouser shipping charges]

Michael

Slightly off topic: I made an order to mouser at one point, about $30
worth of stuff. Turns out one of the resistor values was backordered,
so they made a second shipment the next day, charging me full postage
for two resistors... However, when I complained to their 800 number,
they refunded my postage. Not bad, I didn't actually expect them to do
that.

I've also had them call me and apologize for backordered parts (well,
actually parts that were in their catalog, but not available for a
month.)

They seem pretty fair to me. Many places have minimums that would have
made you order $20 worth of parts to get them to ship it at all.

Regards,
Bob Monsen

Digi key did that to me once. I got kinda upset - but I realized that it
was completely beyond their control and so I just dealt with it. Luckily it
was just shipped ground so it was like an extra $8 or something.

 

[Richard]

In a similar line of thought... just because the vendor promises
pass-through shipping fees doesn't mean you'll get the best rate.

I recently had a smallish order from Newark that cost ~$13 in shipping
when UPS' rack rate was ~$8 for Joe Public (same weight & dimensions). I
was shocked because I expected Newark's volume discounts to be better
than ours.

We went several rounds with Newark trying to understand why (in the
interest of managing future costs, not recovering the $5), and they
never could explain the discrepancy. I suspect they actually invoice
estimated shipping fees and there are holes in the process.

However, we did clarify that if our UPS account had been used instead,
there would be no S&H fees from Newark (i.e., no hidden "handling"
charges) - just product & tax.

Lesson learned: provide your own shipping # - at least with Newark.