McMaster Carr is basically a mashup of Home Depot and Amazon.com and even with boat loads of $$ in annual revenue, you’ve most likely never heard of them. They are legendary among the garage-tech folks for having any part or tool that you could think of and they will ship it to you next day. They are also well known for customer service, which brings me to this post.
We are currently redoing our kitchen. The handles to my cabinet hardware need an odd bolt that no big box store carries, and it’s impossible to find online in batches less than 7000. I only need 100 of these puppies.
I found them on McMaster-Carr’s gorgeous website; it’s the model of simplicity and hiding away complexity from customers. You have access to 400,000 parts but it feels like your just flipping pages in a catalog.
I needed the screws overnight, when they didn’t arrive yesterday I called them. UPS had destroyed the packages on accident, so McMaster-Carr just refunded me the shipping and are sending me a new box. I didn’t have to wait on hold forever, I didn’t have to fight someone to get a shipping refund, and the best part is that the phone call took about 2 mins.
Check out this story on McMaster-Carr