Jamestown Distributors

[CatBuilder]

I am a former Jamestown Distributors customer. They are located in RI. I had previously worked with one guy who was a little slow to move. You had to light a fire under him to get your order done. He was, at least, competent when the order finally went through. They guy left the company to go work for Harken. Smart move, IMO.

This time, I got some sales clerk named Mic***** Han****** <name redadacted>. She was awful. Terrible. She gave me retail list pricing+. Some examples were:

$4038 for 55 gallons of System Three General Purpose Resin

This resin comes in 55 gallon drums, but she (like a greedy rip off artist) quoted me 11(qty) 5 gallon pails of it instead. I pointed out to her that I had previously bought a 55 gallon drum of the same resin from Jamestown and showed her my old invoice. She refused to budge! She wouldn't even acknowledge that they are able to order 55 gallon drums. Her price of $4038 for the epoxy is about $1000 higher than average, list retail pricing.

Now, we come to the sundries.

9" roller cover - short nap $3.50 buying 48 of them at a time! :497:
I can get these roller covers cheaper at Home Depot buying then one at a time! Same goes for the 9" roller frames.

Let's look at grinding discs next:

MMM-50426
FIBRE DISC 7"X 7/8" 36 GRIT 501C
25/BX 100/CS

This is their 36 grit, 7" grinding disc. It she charged me $2.21 EACH DISC when I am buying 24 of them. At Harbor Freight, I can go in and buy the same sanding dics for $0.99 each! :497:

http://www.harborfreight.com/pack-of...scs-97082.html

Also, she was charging me $130 for shipping on the sundries while buying them at Harbor Freight, if I chose to buy them online rather than walking in, I get free shipping on any order over $125.

Adding insult to injury, I contacted the company and wrote to them, pointing out these very facts. Their response after I've already dropped a cool $10K this year as a client? NOTHING. No response. No offer to help with my botched order, no offer to set things right, no reply at all.

Moral of the story is, don't buy anything from Jametown Distributors unless you enjoy paying more than retail pricing and getting no customer service at all with order problems.

[FMS]

I've ordered a dozen times from Jamestown Distributors for small projects and I've always gotten great service and enjoy their good selection and quality of screws, sealants, hand tools, etc. But their pricing is on the higher side. My orders averaged a few hundred dollars each so I was buying at retail pricing and didn't ask for trade or volume pricing. Harbor Freight and Home Depot are cheaper if they have the same items.

[CatBuilder]

They may be great for small projects where you should be paying retail+, but they will sink any boat builder's budget very quickly.

[Steve W]

Cat, have you set up a business? i think this is what you need to do and you will need to do so for your chartering anyway.When i first came to the US 30 yrs ago i was brought in to build a 64ft strip planked ketch, the owner had set up a boatbuilding company just for this project just to get wholesale pricing. I agree with you that pricing should be based on how much you buy, nothing else, when you are building a big project like yours you are spending tens of thousands of dollars. On a lot of things you will of course get better pricing at chain stores. I hate distributors and avoid them wherever possible unless they are stocking distributors,if they dont have what i want sitting on the shelf i pass them by, i dont mind paying their markup if they have outlaid something in order to stock an item but wont pay it so they can order it for me.
Steve.