Is this usual for GMC Paul's?

[Longhorn 70]

I placed 2 orders with GMC Paul's today. It totaled a bit over $300 and I thought all was good as the website accepted my 2 orders. No shipping or tax was added at checkout which I LIKED.

I later received 2 emails telling me that the shipping needed to be added to both. OK I guess I could live with that. The second order BOTH parts had raised prices on them. All of a sudden I felt uncomfortable and cancelled both orders.

Has this happened to anyone else???

[Tinkermc]

never dealt with them but I would have cancelled also, rather safe than sorry

[Longhorn 70]

They DID refund me right away. I appreciated that. I just want to look for the best deal I can find.
Posted via Mobile Device

[71swb4x4]

Originally Posted by Longhorn 70

They DID refund me right away. I appreciated that. I just want to look for the best deal I can find.
Posted via Mobile Device

The best deal doesn't always mean the cheapest prices.
That being said I don't agree with increasing prices after an order has been made. That stinks. I would call or email them and ask for the original prices and actual shipping costs.

[BigCountryx]

Yeah, kinda weird how it's up to you to select the appropriate shipping, but they've always been on the up and up with me. They've called me before for specifics for an order. Nothing uncomfortable about any of my transactions
Posted via Mobile Device

[70STOVEBOLT]

The only issue I had with them is that they charge shipping based on the amount of money you spend. I don't mind paying shipping charges, but it should be based on the weight of the item(s) and the zip code it's being shipped to. Not a slam on GMC Pauls, just my opinion. I was very happy with the quality of the parts and their prices seemed to be in line with other vendors.

[WadmalawJoe]

I received an email from them during my last purchase with them. They said next time I order there will be extra shipping charges because I live on a island. Talk about rolling on the floor laughing.... I'm not living on some remote island where everything arrives by boat. The whole coast of the Carolina's is made of islands and majority of them are all connected by roads and bridges. You don't really even know your on a island because all you did was drive over a creek or river. My wife and I buy and sell on the internet all the time. UPS pulls right up to the door to pick up or drop off packages.
Anyway, I don't know what's going on there with their shipping, but everything I have bought from there has been good quality.

[kaycee]

Yeah thats what happened on my order ,I cancelled and went with somebody else.I hate when they give a price then u get done and pay and u see the bill has xxxx $ added to it for shipping just went through this with Bowtie Overdrives

[68gmsee]

Originally Posted by 70STOVEBOLT

The only issue I had with them is that they charge shipping based on the amount of money you spend. I don't mind paying shipping charges, but it should be based on the weight of the item(s) and the zip code it's being shipped to. Not a slam on GMC Pauls, just my opinion. I was very happy with the quality of the parts and their prices seemed to be in line with other vendors.

I also agree that shipping should be by weight and size not by price. Don't know if they still do it but years ago I stopped ordering from JC Whitney and others that do that. I think it's the lazy way to ship parts.

I've ordered a few parts from GMCPauls with no issues in the past and didn't know they went by price rather than actual shipping weight and size. Maybe they've changed their procedures.

[special-K]

I don't order on-line. I look on-line,then call and talk to people. Never had an issue like this doing it that way. Businesses like this are small and their time is probably focused on more important things than keeping their website absolutely up to date. Sure,they "should" make that priority,but many of us have been around way longer than the internet and just don't get it . You can bet a huge faceless company like LMC will have an up to date website,because that's about their only redeeming quality...they're huge and need to cast a huge net. I prefer mom & pops and would rather deal with their short comings. I know shipping isn't free,so if it's not there then is it's no big deal to me.

[ecgate]

I've been trying to get shipping quotes from gmc pauls for 3-4 months (as they request you to do on their web site) and they still haven't sent a reply to me. I've sent three requests to them. Still waiting.lol

[GMCPaul]

Originally Posted by ecgate

I've been trying to get shipping quotes from gmc pauls for 3-4 months (as they request you to do on their web site) and they still haven't sent a reply to me. I've sent three requests to them. Still waiting.lol

I see we replied with a ship quote to you on Mon. Dec 10th asking for a 67 bed kit quote, I also see you've just asked about the same bed kit again in our email inbox from 9:16pm last night. So I'm going to guess your email account is either rejecting us as spam emails or just not letting them through. If you have a email account that after we reply by email we then receive another email from your provider requesting we fill out a form in order to be able to email you then we are at fault because we don't then fill out those forms. if your email account requires pre-approval from you to get emails from someone and those that don't have it have to fill out a form if you haven't pre-approved them prior to your emailing them then I'm sorry but were busy enough shipping, giving ship estimates, restocking, working on web site etc.... to take the time to jump through the hoops needed to get you the reply you want.
I'll make sure they get you a ship quote on Monday, and if we need preapproval to be able to get through to your email address please make sure to do add us to your approved list before Monday and if suspect your email providers rejecting our emails as spam add our email address to your email address book then if your email account is treating are emails as spam it will let them through if you have our email address in your email address book.
Paul @ GMCPauls

[GMCPaul]

Originally Posted by Longhorn 70

I placed 2 orders with GMC Paul's today. It totaled a bit over $300 and I thought all was good as the website accepted my 2 orders. No shipping or tax was added at checkout which I LIKED.

I later received 2 emails telling me that the shipping needed to be added to both. OK I guess I could live with that. The second order BOTH parts had raised prices on them. All of a sudden I felt uncomfortable and cancelled both orders.

Has this happened to anyone else???

We buy from 47 different large suppliers and a ton of small suppliers. Every year at the beginning of the year we start receiving new price books from most suppliers where some prices change and some don't. So we then have to go through every part and examine the old price in our suppliers old catalog & then examine the new price. We then have to go through and update prices for the parts. I spend 60-70 hours a week doing this and other things to keep the business up to date and running smoothly but when you receive 7 different new price sheets from 7 different suppliers in the month of March like we did this year you just can't get every price updated for every parts that's increased over night when you offer thousand & thousands of parts spread over many year groups with differences occurring within the year groups also. So this is the reason That all business's have a disclaimer
""Prices are subject to change without notice.""
So when we receive a order that we've had price increases on that we have not had a chance to update we notify the customer of the change and they then have the choice to re-place the order at the new actual price we are selling the part for or they can decline to purchase it at the new higher price. Your 2nd order had 2 items that on one more than doubled in price from our supplier last month and what you were billed originally was way less than we pay the other item increased in cost us by a little over 30% this part on your order was again costing us more than you paid for it, and we had raised our price 22% on this item. neither of these items you had ordered had their prices updated yet to reflect their new cost. So since we can't stay in business by selling our parts for less than what we pay when we already have to pay 2.8% on the card transaction, overhead on maintaining a 6000 sq ft warehouse and employees to pay before I even see a dime for myself then yes we have to cancel a order that has incorrect pricing on it. I know of several other companies in this business that just charge the customer the new amount and ship. We don't, we notify you after canceling the order & card transaction and you then get the option to decide if you want to pay its actual price.
Regarding shipping there is no easy way for a company that's a small business to get their hands on software that's not in the tens of thousands of dollars that has a shopping cart software that can figure the costs of shipping on multiple types of parts such as non-oversized parts, oversized I, Oversized II, & Oversized III, & truck freight shipping. You can set the shopping carts up so they base it on weight and then the shopping carts figures shipping wrong on any oversized I, II, or III items and truck freight items in a order. The method we use seems to work best. But this method requires our customer to take 10 seconds to click on a drop down bar and select shipping. Some customers however don't take the time to select this shipping from the drop down bar on our web site. If you don't take the time to select the shipping costs that we ask on our check out page to select then no shipping is billed. If you haven't paid shipping then we have no way to get you your parts and the orders voided & refunded & we request you place the order again selecting shipping costs.
we don't hide the shipping drop down bar its directly below the bill to information boxes on our web site and directly above the credit card info boxes and it says
Select shipping Based Upon Non-oversized Parts total.
Then at the bottom of the check out page we place a disclaimer that must be checked by you that you have read it and In it it states to make sure you select shipping from our shipping drop down bar before clicking on the submit button. I even state if you don't select shipping you can be billed a additional $3.00 if we have to bill shipping separate. We don't actually charge this extra $3.00 but its there in my hope that helps prompt people to make sure to select shipping. because if you don't select it and we email you notifying you that you didn't select shipping and tell you the cost of shipping in this email and ask your approval to bill you shipping is alright. If you say yes we then have to go through and bill shipping separate. this all adds extra time to the processing of the order.
In regards to the shipping costs based on dollar amount it is based upon average costs to ship the items in order in that approx. cost range except for the low cost items if your just ordering a pair of outer rocker plugs and that's it we just sold you $3.00 worth of parts, my profit on that $3.00 in parts before expenses is .65ents before the credit card company takes .30cents per transaction & 2.8% of total cost so they get 2.8% of parts cost and they get 2.8% of the shipping costs, then this small order takes approx. 15 minutes from beginning to end to get out the door. First we have to print the invoice, pull the parts, inspect parts as its packaged, then print the label. In this case a pair of outer rocker plugs would ship priority mail for $5.15

So the credit card company got .30 on the transaction fee, then they got 2.8% from the $3.00 in parts and $9.00 shipping which is .336 cents they round it up to .34cents, so now we've been charged .64 cents on a part that we've made .65cents on, I've paid a employee to pull the parts & ship. 15minutes from a $12.00 a hour employee= $3.00 labor, then since its shipping Priority and the mails picked up in the morning we then take everything that shipped priority to the post office ourselves before they close so that the item leaves the same day, again time & fuel costs.

So I've got $3.64 in expenses on this order.

Transaction Fee .30

Credit Card Interest .34

Parts cost me $2.35

shipping $5.15

Labor $3.00

Total expenses on order= $11.14

Total delivered cost to our customer $12.00

My profit .86cents

Sometimes though I actually lose money on shipping though as a $15.00 glove box we bill $9.00 shipping on where as they generally cost $10.00+ to ship them.

I sold a little over $470,000.00 in parts last year, my profit for myself was $27,600.00 last year, if it wasn't for the fact I also farm & harvest woods grown ginseng for additional income I couldn't have supported my family.

How many of you want to work 60-70 hours for a yearly income of $27,600.00??

So we are definitely not taking advantage of our customers on our prices or shipping.

If we receive a order and shipping is way off to high we contact the customer and notify them of this and refund the excess. In example we got a customer that was placing a order at the beginning of this week that was almost $4000.00 in parts, because it had truck freight items, and oversized I, & II items in order the shopping cart couldn't figure shipping right because it was applying separate freight costs on each truck freight item and on each oversized item so shipping ended up being almost $1000.00 but when we calculated shipping on everything we discovered it was around $450.00 so we notified them of this and adjusted what was being charged on shipping and returned the excess amount charged.

There is so much more involved in shipping costs that the average person thinks about. Such as my example above had it shipping priority thankfully we get free boxes for this if not we would have had the cost of the box also included in our expenses, + tape, and if its fragile then we have packing material costs such as bubble wrap.

I offer the best quality parts I can find from the suppliers I buy from not the cheapest part that's available that's normally lower quality, and then I try to get it to my customer as fast and as safely as I can.

Paul @ GMCPauls

[Tom Vogel]

Everyone should have to earn a living by being in business for themselves. At least once. Its not easy.
The state and Federal govt wants their money before I get it, but when Im in here late at night after a 14+ hour day, not once have they sent a helper... not once.

[big d's red67]

Originally Posted by Tom Vogel

Everyone should have to earn a living by being in business for themselves. At least once. Its not easy.
The state and Federal govt wants their money before I get it, but when Im in here late at night after a 14+ hour day, not once have they sent a helper... not once.

x2

[eldogg]

Well said. ^

[gipper]

I have spent a ton of money at GMC Paul's and have not been dissapointed. When I ordered my kit to change from drum to disc brakes on the front, they were more than helpful. Everything fit as it should and function was perfect. Love the "little guy" as opposed to the "Big Box Stores"

[Longhorn 70]

When I was a kid I used to mow lawns. One of my mom's friends had a BIG lawn. I told her I'd mow and trim for $10. It took me 4 hours and I felt like I did it TOO cheap. BUT that is the price I quoted. SO I did it for that.

Paul, I have worked retail auto parts and commercial parts as well. Once in a while we'd have a part that we lost on but that is what it was marked and that's what we sold it for. NEXT time we sold it at an increased price.

I have purchased my parts from another LOCAL vendor and from eBay now. I paid much less than your prices that were marked on your site.

The main reasons I went to your site is you support this board and the prices marked are fair.

Thank you for your kind post.

[GMCPaul]

Originally Posted by Longhorn 70

When I was a kid I used to mow lawns. One of my mom's friends had a BIG lawn. I told her I'd mow and trim for $10. It took me 4 hours and I felt like I did it TOO cheap. BUT that is the price I quoted. SO I did it for that.

Paul, I have worked retail auto parts and commercial parts as well. Once in a while we'd have a part that we lost on but that is what it was marked and that's what we sold it for. NEXT time we sold it at an increased price.

I have purchased my parts from another LOCAL vendor and from eBay now. I paid much less than your prices that were marked on your site.

The main reasons I went to your site is you support this board and the prices marked are fair.

Thank you for your kind post.

I'm happy you were able to find the parts you wanted at prices you like the customer being satisfied is what matters and it sounds like you are. One item that may differ on the parts you receive from the others you ended up purchasing them from is all the A/C parts & body bushings you ordered from us were made in the USA. I can get buy every one of these 4 items for less by buying those parts from a different supplier that sells a imported part instead that was manufactured overseas. Some parts I have to buy from overseas origins as they are the only option but when I can get better made in the USA parts I do. Sometimes the quality difference isn't always visual such as the rubber quality on most imported parts being made with large amounts of recycled rubber and then the hoses, seals, etc... break down far faster than expected. I buy taillight lenses & standard sidemarkers from a USA supplier and pay almost twice the price as the imported version and from what I've seen the majority if not all the other retailers are buying the imported version but the U/V protection that's built into the USA made lens keep them shiny and new looking longer when exposed to the sun compared to the imported versions.
Paul @ GMCPauls

[special-K]

Originally Posted by Longhorn 70

When I was a kid I used to mow lawns. One of my mom's friends had a BIG lawn. I told her I'd mow and trim for $10. It took me 4 hours and I felt like I did it TOO cheap. BUT that is the price I quoted. SO I did it for that.

Paul, I have worked retail auto parts and commercial parts as well. Once in a while we'd have a part that we lost on but that is what it was marked and that's what we sold it for. NEXT time we sold it at an increased price.

Apples to oranges when comparing face to face dealings with internet dealings. You're dealing with a program,not a person. I placed an order with Cabelas. In my cart it showed a total that wasn't acknowledging my bonus points. When I called,without me saying a word about it,they ran through the costs and took my bonus points off. I'm not sure if it just didn't show the points applied in my cart or if I had ordered online if the points would not have been redeemed due to a glitch in the system. Either way,there was a glitch that didn't show the points applied.
Also,what changed between the time you quoted your price for mowing that lawn and the time you finished? The lawn didn't get bigger did it? You under bid and that's on you. At your parts store job,someone marked the wrong price. That was a mistake and those cost businesses money. By law you have to charge the marked price. If someone had called on that part and was quoted the wrong price,when they came to the store to buy it they would have been told they were quoted the wrong price and charged the correct price.

Before even reading this I had realized the issue is with flaws in internet shopping. t some point,no matter how automated instant push button it seems,there is a transition point from internet to human. You could be placing an order at the same moment a vendor is at his computer updating his website.So,even if a vendor has the luxury of enough time to be fanatical about keeping their website up to date there can be discrepancies.

[ItsRandy]

I too have been "disappointed" with shipping charges and/or parts quality from different vendors I have purchased parts from and not just GMC Pauls. I have a solution, I just don't purchase parts from them any longer. There are plenty of sources of parts for our trucks, from people who want your business, that don't whine about how tough it is to be in business and provide exceptional customer service.

If you think you haven't been treated fairly, stop buying stuff from them. It's that simple.

[GMCPaul]

[QUOTE=ItsRandy;5995594] There are plenty of sources of parts for our trucks, from people who want your business, that don't whine about how tough it is to be in business and provide exceptional customer service.
QUOTE]

I'm sorry if you felt we were whining. A post was made about my business and I tried to respond to simply explain why things are the way they are and if you took this as whining I'm sorry that was not the intention of my post. I also wasn't trying to harp at anyone or dissing my customers as a couple of other have emailed us stating last night if anyone's taken this post to be that I'm dissing you or harping I also apologize it wasn't my intention, I again was only trying to explain things by posting what we as a business go through as the customers not always aware of everything. So if anyone has been affronted or took umbrage with my post I offer my sincerest apologies to you as it was not my intention to offend anyone.
Paul @ GMCPauls

[WadmalawJoe]

Paul,

I feel you have every right to respond and explain what you have going on. I thank you for doing so. I to have a couple small businesses and know the struggle and know you can't please everyone no matter how hard you try and its obvious you care, as your on here explaining yourself.
There seems to be more drastic price changes everywhere these days, more than normal it seems to me anyway. I blame it on our crappy government right now and also all the changes with companies doing more and more business globally. Especially in your area of business, you have to really sort through to find quality products, sometimes products made in the USA aren't any better than the imported products. There will always be a demand for cheap low quality products as well as a demand for good quality products. Its up to each business owner to decide what they want to be known for.
I will buy from you again for your quality products, but I will probably call it in so the shipping issues can be addressed at the same time.

Joe

[C10_ustacould]

First part came from a big vendor won't name names but it rhymes with Hecklers... Second was from GMCPaul and the pics are worth more than 1000 words. Always receive good service and great parts from GMCPauls and I think I bought my Buddy Buckets from him too!