Same for Lowe's. There's a reason people shop on Amazon. Other than BestBuy, no other retailer "gets" ecommerce.
And the prices are a fraction of what you pay at a brick and mortar place. Especially for e.g. wiper blades.
Companies that "get" e-commerce are out there, but a lot of them are quietly and competently doing their thing in unsexy domains and aren't trying to eat the whole pie.
Rock Auto, for instance, isn't trying to serve every idiot on the planet with a car. If you can't keep your lefts/rights and fronts/backs straight when ordering e.g. brake hoses, you're going to find it a frustrating experience. Putting up a (small) barrier to entry to keep out the least clueful people probably helps keep their costs down.
Not affiliated, just a very happy repeat customer.
Some parts are cheap but they're also inexpensive.
This was 10 years ago now, so sort of like Amazon Prime before it became ubiquitous, but for materials and tools. However McMaster was and remains much better organized and much better spec-ed.
I would like to know if a McMaster-Carr, Grainger, et al had fallen into the same traps Amazon has when it comes to supply chain and if eventually Amazon will be shaped into a similar company & business model.
Amazon knows that retail margins are tiny, a few percent at best, and that is not what they are interested in. It takes a lot of labor to provide high quality vetting and constant vigilance over suppliers. What they are interested in is high margins, which comes from being a platform.
I don't think McMaster Carr or Grainger ever had any intention of becoming platforms for resellers so they could take a top line cut of sales and outsource quality control.
If anything, I think Amazon is probably trying to reduce their shipped and sold by Amazon.com retail operations and focus on the high margin web services. Why compete with Walmart/Target/Best Buy/Home Depot/Lowes for <5% profit margin with huge liabilities when you can make 20%+ easy on super scalable web services?
What's interesting is that considering the existing logistics, none of these guys though of expanding into other ecommerce earlier. One of them could have been Amazon...
For example, let's say I want a piece of hollow metal cylinder (any metal, to be determined later based on cost and availability), with an ID of around 12 mm and a wall thickness of at least 5 mm, at least 150 mm long. It ends up being a needlessly frustrating experience even for such a simple item.
Getting things custom made is expensive, so customers are pressured to use what's widely available. Stocking lots of things not widely purchased is also expensive. These forces have been working for a long time to give us a pretty wide selection that covers most uses.
Examples: Oil filters are often differently sized but still interchangeable between models. You can use an Aisin-built airflow meter from a 90s Mazda to replace one in a Toyota, even though they're different housings, and it would work (if not perfectly) because it's essentially the same part with the same electronics. Brakes and suspension parts often interchange across many models, with the possibility of 'upgrading' to heavier duty parts from more expensive models.
Anyway, it'd be great if you could combine a lot of data and NLP to search off-the-shelf parts based on parameters of varying specificity. Anything from "made of metal and roughly x/y/z dimensions" to "shares the same bolt pattern as part # on a joining surface" could be made searchable in theory.
When I tried to re-order through my personal company (not in any way cannabis-related) I was told I'm not a big enough company for them to deal with (and they cancelled the order).
From a CAD/dimensional standpoint, their website is a goldmine. I just wish they would take my money.
Autozone / NAPA try, but the catalogs are clunky and require many page loads to navigate to a given item. Once you find an item, it's a crapshoot whether the listing will be items that are actually for sale at a store near me. Half the time the first 5 items will be "generic" parts that don't actually fit my car anyway.
RockAuto lets you drill down to the exact part you need, compare 5+ different brands on the spot and add it to the cart without ever changing pages. It's a real triumph of slim web design.
I used to look for parts on Advance and O'Reilly's sites, half of the time it seemed the search results would have parts that wouldn't fit my car. So I really like the way that RA's nested folder structure ensures the most important constraint (compatibility) is met during the search.
Parts-tree another great one, focused on yard maintenance equipment.
Ace hardware is kind of neat. I ordered some stuff as Christmas presents and the local store called me on the phone to ask if I was going to be home and where would I like them to put the items. I asked if they could stick them in the garage and maybe in some generic looking boxes to preserve the surprise (of being presents) and the boxes all showed up neatly hand wrapped in brown paper! Only one data point but definitely made me feel like ordering again.
Walmart shipping is pretty on point as well, and you don't need to pay 120$ a year for 2 day shipping.
You can use the search to REFINE as you search. Start by typing Toyota Camry YEAR and 2.4L if you want. It will keep making suggestions but you can click enter. Then you have a tree to select from OR you can use the new search box that appears to keep searching just in that tree. Then when you get to a category, a third search box appears you can use to filter the results. It's honestly amazing how fast you can search for things. There was another comment about having to scroll a lot, but that's the slow way to use the site.
Rock Auto is one of those sites that will never work as well if it became "mobile first." Like craigslist and photoshop, and the old facebook, its beauty is in its density and how quick you can navigate and drill.
Apple, CostCo, Ashley Home Funiture, Wayfair, Wal-Mart, and some minor players, have all performed well in my usage and those who I know also use them. Now with two I had a damaged item they did not want any part of returned, apparently this is common with free shipping deals as the return shipping for larger items can be ridiculous.
Home Depot I have to agree with assessments others have made, lost an item off their own dock and when recreating the order after two weeks of back and forth; UPS was getting annoyed too, they wanted to remake the order and charge full shipping again. Just really bad customer service. They really do act like all screw ups are yours.
Target.com is a pretty solid experience.
Walmart.com is also surprisingly good.
Although I'm sure people can provide horror stories for both retailers.
Target and Best Buy definitely nailed it.
Target sells ad space to random 3rd parties.
HomeDepot and Lowes are a joke. HomeDepot.com even tried to sneak in a 'handling fee' at the checkout ( paraphrasing I forget what they called it ) for a small kitchen appliance though it said 'free shipping' at first glance next to the item description.
I also think they'll price-match.
Their inventory data seems to be a bit messy, I've seen a lot of product names/images/descriptions that are clearly messed up, and on more than a few occasions, I've received a single item when the listing said it was a multi-pack. Also, some of the inventory counts are a bit weird -- sometimes an item will show in-stock on the product page, but not in the cart, at the same time.
In the past I had a lot of issues with their shipping, but they seem to have mostly fixed those. Stuff like those huge stickers over important parts of the product, or improper packing.
Amazon is increasingly overrated, they peaked a decade ago and have declined to a warehouse club/flea market.
They're not as far along, but going down that path is what causes so many issues with counterfeits and generally poor experiences. I accidentally bought some thermal paste from a newegg seller who shipped it via slow-boat-from-china, and it took weeks to get to me. It was technically listed, but I hate any shopping experience that forces me to be on high alert not to get screwed (as minor as super-slow shipping is).
I went from buying almost all PC parts from NewEgg (without even bothering to price shop), to pretty much avoiding the site entirely.
If you look at almost any of the 3rd party sellers' pages and sort by rating, you'll pretty much see the same pattern on all: a tiny handful of 4-5 star reviews, 1 star reviews by the bottom of page 1, and the remaining 80 pages of products have no reviews at all.
Is this really helping Walmart/NewEgg/Amazon/etc vs them just selling the same products directly themselves? Why do this -- are they just trying to avoid these sellers starting competing no-name e-commerce sites?
My thought would be this allows them to pivot from being a "logistics" company to being a "tech" company, providing a "platform" for others.
Overstock & Wayfair are way easier to work with by comparison.
Maybe I'm getting a better experience because I'm in Atlanta and there's a bit of a headquarters halo effect.
Their search and general catalog organization isn't great. I just use Google as my entrance to their site and that makes life easier.
Search, sorting and faceting features are unmatched: Looking for a pair of handlebars: you can filter by material, colour, width, diameter, rise, sweep, brand, stock level, price. Need some wheels, specifically a wheel set that has a 25mm internal rim diameter, for road biking, disc brake compatible, with 6 bolt disc mounts, 28 spokes, made of carbon fibre, in stock, and then arranged by discount level? Then want to buy it for an actual reasonable price, and receive it within a calendar week (pretty great considering I'm on the opposite side of the world), then CRC is literally unmatched.
Components etc are sensibly, correctly and consistently arranged by type and feature in a way that makes me wish every other online retailer would take several pages out of their book.
I've hunted for bike components on Amazon, it was a painful experience that resulted in a lot of manual searching, going between several pages trying to compare between half a dozen differently formatted and arranged spec sheets just to figure out which components were compatible, and even then the prices were not worth it.
Sweetwater for music gear. They are the only online company I've ever dealt with that I consider better than Amazon.
Luckily the product I ordered worked fine, but I wasn't best pleased when I opened it. It was pretty obvious the manufacturer designed the product packaging for retail shelves only, and Home Depot just assumed it was shipping-grade protection.
And you can't state quantities on the Target.com site when you select an item. You have to go into the cart and change the quantity. That's something most sites do better.
Also, I understand it's a difficult time inventory-wise, but don't let me put stuff in my cart if you can't deliver it and won't let me order anything until I remove them. Give me a "save for later" feature ... like Amazon does.
Ordered an item, their delivery estimate was 3-5 days. 7 days passed and the item hasn't shipped. No updated ETA or any information/communication on how long it might take.
Decided to cancel and order from an alternative vendor (who would communicate better, frankly). Was unable to even cancel it online (cancel button was missing, in contradiction to their help docs).
Tried to use Online Chat to cancel, which was seemingly offline/broken for multiple days. Finally called their customer service number, and it was cancelled within the hour (which credit where credit is due was one of the best telephone customer service experiences I've had).
Took all of 10 days to NOT receive a 3-5 day item from Costco.com, the replacement item ordered elsewhere arrived in 48 hours. Still don't know how long the Costco.com item would have taken because they never communicated that.
1. Your order type fell into an edge cast that an incomplete batch system -> system transfer job choked on. Naturally, it silently failed.
2. Inventory count mismatch.
3. Incomplete transportation handshake.
Logistics looks simple from a customer perspective: (1) order, (2) ship, (3) receive. From a vendor perspective it's (1+) bulk source, (2+) distribute, (3) maintain consistent inventory counts, (4) receive order, (5) source order items from stock most efficiently, (6) orchestrate multi-sourced items, (7+) provision & batch transportation, receiving and reshipping at multiple legs, (8+) fulfill last mile.
All while stitching together 30+ year old systems for each of those. And the +'d items are all semi-outside of the company's control. (Ever wonder why there are so many transportation-abstraction companies?)
Which is to say, no excuse for bad service. But it's a bear of a problem.
Incidentally, why most retail has excellent customer support phone centers (usually onshore): they know their systems break a non-zero amount of time, and want the best touch when you need to have things fixed.
I ordered a case of water through Amazon through a reseller. The shipment literally got lost. Amazon dispute, 20 minutes later, refund is done.
I am waiting for a resolution through Paypal from another website - off amazon - since Friday for toilet paper that will definitely not be sent. After looking at policies, etc.. they generally don't do refunds.
Though, I did have luck on one other site.
I placed an order for a pair of 35lb dumbbells, and only one came, and the cardboard box around it was falling apart.
I called customer support, probably for the first time in my life, to ask wtf happened. And they explained the logistics issue (the dumbbells were shipped separately for some reason), and ended up crediting me half the cost of the dumbbells, even though the first wasn't really damaged.
Also their dumbbells were better and cheaper than Amazon's, so there's that too.
USPS limits packages to 70 LBs. There's probably some special option to get around this, but for the "normal" shipping, that's the limit.
We recently moved into a new house (from an apartment) and needed lots of little things renters never worry about. I have ordered quite a bit of stuff from Home Depot, from a washer & dryer to a lawn mower to random small tools and paint. Never had any issue whatsoever.
Meanwhile, Amazon can cancel items even after they ship most of the time.
Their website isn't the best for finding things, but I've never had any issues with an order from them, ever. And I've bought a lot of stuff.
Pro tip for if you can physically go to one of their stores: If you make a purchase and they run their 11% rebate the next week, ask at the front desk for the pre-rebate adjustment, which lets you get it for your previous purchase.