RockAuto has created a short 4-minute video to help you minimize shipping costs at RockAuto.com. Take a moment and discover how to use some of the RockAuto.com catalog features to help you save on shipping at RockAuto.com! [YT]q0jvKxT975g[/YT] RockAuto Parts Catalog
Thanks for the information. I cannot tell you how many times shipping costs was a deal breaker. I would get a full cart then cancel the order once I saw the shipping. I had to end up going to a local parts store instead.
A video to help explain how to reduce shipping costs might imply shipping is overly complicated at RockAuto, but actually it is the opposite. Customers simply pay whatever FedEx, UPS, USPS or other delivery services charge for shipping their parts. We offer all customers the lowest part prices we can and customers pay whatever FedEx, UPS, etc. charges to deliver their parts. As our video tries to show, the customer picks the parts and the catalog tells them via the little truck icons which warehouses the parts ship from. Parts ship from multiple warehouses around the world, which means customers are often pleasantly surprised how fast their parts arrive even with standard shipping. The customer decides if they want to pay to ship boxes from multiple warehouses or if for this particular order, they want to choose only parts that are on the shelves of one warehouse. That might require flexibility about choice of brands, but any of the warehouses would provide a much greater selection of parts and far lower prices than what is available on the shelves at any chain auto parts storefront. RockAuto has thousands of customers with deep affection for the RockAuto catalog and the simplicity at its core. We hope the shipping video helps customers less familiar with the catalog. For some people, it might require a whole different mindset. Do not consider it to be a personal affront if those brakes cannot ship from the same warehouse as that particular brand of strut. Instead, try thinking how amazing it is to have access to the full product lines of a couple of hundred part manufacturers. Think how fun it is to be able to quickly peruse the shelves of numerous big warehouses. Notice how low your total cost is (parts plus shipping) if you make an effort to choose more parts from as few warehouses as possible every time you order. One of the reasons my family made RockAuto available online was to give customers access to all those part catalogs, warehouse inventories, etc. hidden behind the counter at the traditional auto parts store. Please enjoy the access RockAuto provides. The video is less wordy and more informative than I am. Please watch it, if you are not familiar with the truck icons and other methods for keeping track of which warehouses your parts are shipping from. Tom Taylor RockAuto.com
For a couple of years now I've been wanting to order a part for my truck from you folks, but the shipping amount you want to charge for it has always been so completely over the top and outlandish that I haven't. After seeing this thread I figured I'd try it again, and see if you finally came to your senses. Nope, you still want to charge me more than $75 to ship a plastic grille for my truck (1999 GMC C3500 with sealed beams) to my zip (22405), when the grille itself is only $41.79 I have my own (company) UPS account, and based on the shipping weight and the estimated package size (adding 2" to the L/H/W dimensions of the current grille) UPS tells me the shipping cost from my Zip to any other Zip in the lower 48 states should be under $20. Still, you folks have improved somewhat. Two years ago I spent 30 minutes on the phone with y'all because you wanted to charge me $145 shipping on it (never did get anyone there to agree that this was an error so I canceled the order). Kudos for that at least. Oh, and there's three different GM dealers on eBay that will sell me the same grille but for composite headlamps for around $65, with free shipping. Unfortunately, you guys seem to be the only ones who carry the version (same size and weight, almost the same price) for sealed beam headlamps.
I feel your pain. I know shipping costs are part of the deal. But it sucks the prices are so good just to be undone by shipping.
Everything that I have ordered from them was a whole lot cheaper even paying for shipping than what I could get it for locally.
The only time My orders were cheaper after shipping was on close outs. Other than that, I have had to pay retail at the parts store because it was cheaper.
I don't mind paying reasonable shipping costs. Someone has to pay the cost of getting it from Point A to Point B, and no company is going to stay in business long without passing that cost along to the customer, one way or another. (Just like TANSTAAFL, TANSTAFS... there ain't no such thing as free shipping) It's when the shipping quote is so over the top and outlandish as to be almost comical that I have objections. In my case it's that, at the time of the first quote, they were telling me a price that was $125.00 more than what UPS was quoting me on my commercial account, and even with the reduced shipping they're quoting now it's still $55.00 over what UPS quotes me to ship it the other way. If the shipping was in line with what I get quoted from UPS I'd have ordered the part two years ago, BING-BAM-DONE, move on to something else and have a warm fuzzy feeling that I got a good deal. Instead, I've avoided ordering anything from Rock Auto since then, unless I simply could not get it any other way. How much business did they lose? In the grand scheme of things not even a drop in the bucket. Maybe a couple hundred bucks worth of parts that they might have made a profit of $15-$25 on, total. Tom here probably spends that much on lunch. But for that same two-year period I can think of at least a dozen times that I consciously did not recommend Rock Auto to friends and others as a good company to do business with. If I recommended them at all it was always with the caveat "Triple check the shipping costs if you order from them, because they have weird ideas about what it costs to ship some things" and then proceeded to tell them about my grille. Did that cost them potential customers? Probably. Did it seriously affect their bottom line? Not a chance in hell, they're too big for that to have much impact, but if the shipping on this one part is so fWONked up, how many other parts is it wrong on? How many other customers have been lost because of it? The people I spoke to on the phone about it just brushed it off, insisting it couldn't possibly be wrong, and I know darn well it never got followed up on and no one ever checked with UPS or FedEx for the real cost. The proof of that is right there in the current shipping cost of $75.80 to ship a 5 lb. grille. Even if the box exceeds the UPS standard size limit and they charge extra for it being oversized, the oversize charge is not $55.00. I regularly order 72" long 3/8" diameter aluminum rod for building antennas, usually a dozen at a time. The most I ever got charged for shipping on those was a $10.00 oversize fee in addition to the regular charges. It will be interesting to see what response I get from Tom on this.
Hello, We calculate shipping charges using "live" FedEx, US Postal Service, UPS, DHL, and truck freight rates. When you add a part to your shopping cart, change a quantity or change your address, the cart automatically recalculates shipping based on the weight and size of your order and your postal (zip) code. As you're building your order, you'll always know the full delivered cost -- before you've entered your credit card number or any other personal information. We try to make our shipping charges match what carriers charge us. We do not consider shipping a "profit center" -- on the contrary, we pass on to customers the discounts we receive from carriers. Many of our customers find that even with shipping calculated into the price the parts they purchase from RockAuto are lower than what they can find anywhere else. If you would like to send me a PM with the measurements you are using to get your quote for the price of the Grille I would be happy to look into this further for you. Thank you, RockAuto Parts Catalog
I'll have to remeasure and get back to you on that. As I said, it was two years ago (closer to three now that I think about it) and I don't have any of that paperwork any longer. I do remember though that UPS quoted me $18.65 to ship the box to Chicago from my zip, and what I did was weigh and measure my existing grille (I had it off for painting - see below) and simply added 2" to each dimension as the "boxed" size. IM000044 par KJ4VOV, on ipernity
