Yeah, I hear things like this a lot, not about Rock Auto specifically but...
I work a customer service job at Digi-Key Electronics and I do hear plenty of complaints like this about other companies. I'm going to make some comments, in no particular order. This is a very long post... it's a deep subject and if you are not interested in the plight of manufacturing and customer service, feel free to skip it.
1) As a general rule, customer service is getting worse across all industries. Why? There was a general trend this way for quite a while because customer service is not a direct-profit center and a lot of companies had already abandoned personal customer service hoping automated service would be enough. This trend climbed steeply with COVID and many more companies flipped to automated service out of necessity or sometimes as an excuse. My company has resisted this trend and customers can talk to actual people. And not just people, people who are actual employees who live in the US (mostly MN where we are based), people who are actually trained and empowered to fix problems immediately. And they are there 24/7/365. That phone service has been in continual service for over 10 years. I'm telling you all this not to brag (though it is amazing) but to show it can be done in today's conditions.
2) Every company across every sector from simple food products to exotic electronics and vehicles has struggle to keep product in their warehouses. Why? Again, there was a general trend that goes back to the 1980's and a concept learned from Japan called 'Just in time' manufacturing. The idea was to keep inventory to an absolute minimum, that any manufacturing material, be it flour, sheet metal, or computer chips, was a waste of money sitting on the shelf waiting to be used. Suppose you assemble cars. You decide you are going to make 251 cars on Tuesday. 'Just in time' dictates that you order exactly 251 rear view mirrors to be delivered that Monday. You don't store anything long-term. You do not maintain a warehouse to keep anything extra because extra costs money. This has been taken to sometimes extreme measures. My company gets orders like 5,281 capacitors that must be on their dock on a specific day, no sooner, no later. These are 5 cent parts!
Now, I'm telling you this because of this next point: This is a fragile system. If that box of capacitors spills open because it got jammed in a UPS sorting facility, it's a HUGE deal. Suppose the customer is a company that makes boards that they sell to a radio company that makes radios that go in cars. That spilled box can jam up a vehicle assembly line down the road because everybody is doing 'just in time'. Our warehouse is in Thief River Falls, Minnesota. We have customers sometimes do 'will call', and they are based in a place like Los Angeles. They put a person on a plane to come get the parts because over-night shipping isn't fast enough... an idle factory is expensive, a broken contract even more-so.
Now, take this fragile system and hit it with COVID. The systems collapse. Warehouses that did keep an inventory emptied out quickly. This is why toilet paper was hard to get for a while.... nobody wanted to maintain a 100,000 sq ft warehouse with extra toilet paper just in case because space and stored inventory cost money.
This will not get any better anytime soon. Why? Because companies sized production capacity to match the 'just in time' model. The pipelines and warehouses are empty. So, you resume production after COVID and you have the capacity to meet demand if you are lucky, but the pipeline remains dry and the warehouses remain empty. If your machine makes 10,000 capacitors per hour, you cannot twist a knob and make 20,000 per hour. It is what it is. And you can't just buy another one million dollar capacitor maker off the shelf either. Same applies to practically every product you buy. This will be a very slow recovery, and when supply is down, demand increases, and you will pay more. My company has suppliers that are forecasting their next delivery of products like certain integrated circuit chips in 2024. That's how far behind they are.
3) Warehousing practices are changing. Do you remember when Amazon used to ship the day after your order? Now it's out to 3-4 days. Why? Companies are starting to implement off-line warehouses where they keep low-demand items. So, a customer orders, the item has to ship from the low-demand warehouse to on-line warehouse and then ships on to the customer. Why? Because of cost. You put that off-line warehouse where land and labor is cheap. If you have to keep inventory, you keep it in the cheapest place you can get away with. I know for a fact that Rock Auto does this.
Sometimes, they don't warehouse at all. My electronics company gets orders from other electronics companies to drop ship to their customers. We are happy to do this because we put our brand on the boxes and paperwork, and maybe they will buy directly from us next time.
4) Delivery companies are having problems and I don't know the root cause. But, UPS, FedEx and USPS are failing to meet delivery dates at an alarming rate. This has been noticeably worse in the last 2 months. I suspect it has to do with COVID and mandatory isolation but I don't know that for sure. It follows though, if airlines are cancelling flights because of isolated pilots, freight carriers will have the same problem.
But, I will say this: We shipped around 8 million boxes last year. In order of delivery reliability, FedEx is the best, UPS is a close second and USPS is a distant third. USPS does very strange things. If I personally order a package and it has to go USPS, it gets to the Twin Cities and then it bounces back and forth between Minneapolis and St Paul, back and forth at least twice, and then it finds it's way out and moves forward again. I avoid USPS if I can.
5) So, what can you do? Yes, for a time critical item, you want to go with someone that has telephone customer service based in the US. Order by phone if you can. Ask them how many they have in stock and if they can't tell you, that's not a good sign. Ask them where it is shipping from. If they can't tell you, that's not a good sign. Ask them when it will actually ship, be specific, tell them you don't want the label date, you want the actual date the carrier picks it up. If they can't tell you, that's not a good sign. A world-class company will be able to do all of these things.
This was a very long post and I'm sorry about that. But, everything I wrote applies to practically everything you use, and I'm hoping people who order things on-line will benefit from it.
