McMaster

McMaster-Carr is a great source for most anything a machinist or mechanic needs in the way of small parts, hardware and shop supplies. Their prices aren't the greatest but the selection and depth of stock is amazing. For prototyping you need only a few parts and McMaster has all sorts of the most ordinary to the most arcane - Need left-hand threaded rod? Check! 8-32 Wing nuts? Check! 1" stainless steel round bar stock? #8 x 0.750" aluminum spacers? Check! And the search feature on their website is amazing! Just start to type what you want and it anticipates and displays similar items. Two clicks and you're at the page with the part descriptions, pictures and pricing. Another click and the part is in your shopping cart. They ship very quickly and the freight charge isn't outrageous.I think they still offer a flat-rate $9 but I could be confusing them with someone else.

There is nothing intuitive about this website - it gives no hint or clue about what country it is in, where it ships to, or even if it is real at all. It is happy to take my credit card, but simply says "shipping and tax will be added" without giving any hint or clue about how much that might be - the entire thing looks like a scam where the hackers didn't even try to make it ask for everything needed to complete an order. If this site is real at all, they need to make it work properly, so customers can actually buy stuff. Nobody hands over their payment details without knowing the price, or where shipping can go to.

McMaster-Carr is the best place to buy nearly anything for an industrial business. Screws, bolts, gauges, electrical components, you name it they've got it. Excellent shipping and customer services as well. Renown for its efficiency, McMaster-Carr can also be great for personal purchases so long as you know a bit about what you're looking for.

While you can certainly find better prices elsewhere, you get what you pay for when it comes to service. I've been using McMaster Carr to purchase items for my business for 10 years now and they have yet to make a mistake or let me down. They have a huge selection of items and almost always next day delivery. Highly Recommended.

I've purchased from McMaster-Carr many times and they have a lot of stuff you can't find anywhere else. Their catalog is about 3" thick!. Especially super fast shipping, I don't know how they do it but lots of stuff is received the next day.

I am proud to be the 21st reviewer of McMaster-Carr and to give it one more 5/5 rating - they definitely deserve the best because the are the best at what they do! I work at a company that sells metal to machine shops and manufacturers - we're known for our ability to get our hands on hard to find products, but often times we just refer our customer to McMaster-Carr -- they got everything, and our customers really appreciate finding out about them. I use them all the time for anything from maintenance to shop supplies to items for my inventive ideas. Their website is top-notch and I've never have anything not arrive the day after I placed my order.

I have been doing online ordering from McMaster Carr since 2009 and they have been great to do business with... but... starting in 2016, they started shipping my orders in multiple boxes when ONE box could easily hold the complete order. More often than not, the shipping charge for EXTRA boxes would exceed the value of the contents.

In 2016 I called their customer service each time this has happened and one of the shipping charges was always credited back to me. However, I have now been told (May 2017) that it is their current policy to ship in multiple boxes and that if a customers complains repeatedly, such customer will no longer be sold to!

What a terrible way to treat customers who you been loyal to you for many years.... :(

Rotten policy for customers unless you are a stockholder in UPS....

I complained to McMaster-Carr that their web site required me to create an account just to browse it and that when I did, it told me I had been browsing too much and must wait 23 hours before I can continue to browse. This is the response I got from them:

"Due to the complexity of U.S. export regulations, McMaster-Carr accepts international orders only from our established customers. This decision also applies to orders shipping within the United States, because it is based on the final destination of the items. We will not provide a quotation or accept your orders."

I first learned of McMaster as an intern back in 2005 and have ordered from them a few hundred times since, with multiple different jobs and for myself. I've never once had a problem with them, and the one time a shipment didn't turn up, it turned out UPS damaged it and didn't tell anyone. McMaster sent the order out again immediately no questions asked when I called about it.

Sometimes my credit card bounces for my own reasons during the purchase process. McMaster doesn't care. My order still arrives the next day. When I found out it had bounced a couple months later when I got an invoice in the mail saying my payment was late, their rep I talked with on the phone was all chipper about it saying, "we don't mind at all; we know you'll want to do business again so you'll pay eventually." Uhhhh. Okay, yes I do!

Also, I've only had to call them four times and each time they pick up the phone within about one ring and I've never been transferred or put on hold. How has no other company I've ever dealt with been that good on the phone?

They have the weirdest ordering system of any online retailer I've ever used and it's by far the easiest and fastest. I never worry about shipping, because the order always arrives next day, even when I order at 6:30pm. On my latest invoice, a two package order that weighed a total of 34lb, that overnight shipping cost me $24. I don't know how they do that! Other shipments of some screws and things that came in a small box cost $5 for shipping. It's really weird that you don't find out about that until after it's shipped, but I guess it's because they don't try to predict costs, or the costs may be driven by how much they ship each day or something. Clearly they're passing the savings along, though. I just paid way too much to ship half that weight in one box from another supplier one state over.

The best thing is their online catalog. Amazon literally tries to be this good and falls far short. The new Amazon Industrial section is clearly trying to compete with McMaster, but you just can't beat McMaster's parametric search. Every time I try to find a specific component from some other supplier I deal with like Digikey or someone, I find myself wishing their catalog was so well tended.

McMaster has a lot of quirks with how they do things that will be unfamiliar to new customers, but I'd urge them to push ahead. It's like McMaster is a weird look into an alternate universe of how online shopping might have been or something. It's pretty great.

I have been ordering from this company for over 7 years now. We have never run into any problems that would make me think negatively about them. I love ordering on their website, and the ability to enter orders and save them so I can prep weeks ahead is fantastic. My confirmations get emailed immediately, parts 99.99% ship on=time (ships from them but outside carriers delay).

If we get a wrong item, or a bad part there is no messing around, you just return it. That simple!

If I forget an item on my order, or need to add something last minute and have already submitted the order, I just call customer service and it is quickly taken care of. I've used email customer service as well and I always get a prompt response.

Please do not let negative comments from very few sway your decision. Most reviews that are negative are from new customers or ones that have just one bad experience but forget how great the company was before and after that.

Just remember, stuff happens. I've really pounded that into my head this last year.

I ordered a 24 pack of 2,850 mA-hr AA Alkaline batteries from McMaster-Carr. The name brand wasn't specified on the Website, but they ended up being Energizer Industrials.

The total cost for these, with shipping and tax, was $22.65. That's a very good deal for such high mA-hr batteries if you ask me.

I ordered these on July 1, 2008 in the afternoon and got them on July 3, 2008. The shipping cost ended up being $5, which I didn't think was bad at all for the two days it took to get my order.

All in all I am very satisfied with my McMaster-Carr purchase and very highly recommend them.

On 05/31/2011 I ordered part# 9001T14, 3 small (micro) replacement springs used in the hinge of a cellphone. The website was recommended by a user of a cellphone repair website who'd ordered the same part and recommended this particular online store to obtain the part.

$5.78 is a decent price, even though only 1 spring is needed to repair the phone, but the "item" is for 3 springs.

Why do I seek to write the review of the website?
#1 - price of the part was actually not relevant, as I just ordered the cellphone (I don't even have it yet) - but bought the springs for backup and expected future use.
#2 - McMaster website was very well laid out and easy to find the part.

Why write the review, and from a web-programming dummy standpoint: With very little effort, there are hundreds of "create your own online store" templates available, prebuilt to overlay WordPress or any of the other CMS auto-install websites scripts... These would include *everything* needed to run an online store.

Upon order of the part from McMaster, I was dismayed and confused that a professional online retail store was not providing shipping and handling cost information as part of the check-out process. Therefore, I IMMEDIATELY sent an email, with order # information, etc, to the customer service email address requesting a 100% complete accurate dollar amount that would be charged, to include the cost of the part, shipping/handling, before shipping the product and charging my provided credit card.

The product was shipped without authorization!

Ultimately would I order from this company again? No! I won't order from a company that can not provide full and legal disclosure of shipping prices PRIOR to shipping a product. Lesson Learned.

I will add the following:

#1 Their email response was "less than" 24 hours, but obviously not effective if the Order/Sales Information email address regarding an order isn't reviewed/responded to prior to the order being shipped.

#2 I only received the tracking number as incidental information to the response to my initial email (it's on the PDF receipt received 6/1)

#3 (AND THIS IS IMPORTANT) - In response to my response email of their 6/1 PDF receipt email, I did receive a refund. **No** - I do not believe this absolves the company from their responsibility to provide accurate costs to the customer before charging the customer and shipping the product.

We have discovered that this business has SSL (secure sockets layer), which means that this business handles your data, such as personal information or credit card details, with secure connection. We found that the domain for this business is older than two years which could be an indication that this is a trustworthy business with an established customer base and experience in their field. We found that this business has an Instagram page, where they communicate with their customers using images and videos. This is usually an indication that the business has some visual aspects that it wants to showcase.