Messick's shipping. You've got to be kidding me!!!

bnauty255

New member

Equipment
2011 Kubota BX25D
Mar 6, 2020
12
1
3
acushnet, MA USA
They do have aftermarket switches at a more reasonable price and even customones, but if you are trying to not modify the existing receiving harness and you are not familiar with the details/specifics needed in order to match the OEM switch to make sure it will work, then your a fish out of water......Any help would be much appreciated!!
 

JimmyJazz

Well-known member

Equipment
B2601
Aug 8, 2020
1,094
643
113
Pittsburgh, Pa
I ordered a fuel pump, the cheapest one offered on Amazon with free shipping, I failed to notice it was being shipped from China . It took almost two months to arrive. The "other side of the coin".
 

Henro

Well-known member

Equipment
B2910, BX2200, KX41-2V mini Ex.
May 24, 2019
5,116
2,341
113
North of Pittsburgh PA
I ordered a fuel pump, the cheapest one offered on Amazon with free shipping, I failed to notice it was being shipped from China . It took almost two months to arrive. The "other side of the coin".
Not great if you are in a hurry!

So did the cheap replacement work for you? I ordered a replacement fuel cutoff solenoid from somewhere for my BX2200 last summer, at about 1/5 the cost of the Kubota part, and it has performed perfectly for about six months now. BUT it was from a USA address and arrived within days, with free shipping.
 

JimmyJazz

Well-known member

Equipment
B2601
Aug 8, 2020
1,094
643
113
Pittsburgh, Pa
Not great if you are in a hurry!

So did the cheap replacement work for you? I ordered a replacement fuel cutoff solenoid from somewhere for my BX2200 last summer, at about 1/5 the cost of the Kubota part, and it has performed perfectly for about six months now. BUT it was from a USA address and arrived within days, with free shipping.
Bought another cheap one shipped from within the US got it quickly. So far , So good. Its also from China. Might have 10 hours on it.
 

K.P.

Member

Equipment
B7300, LA272 FEL, B2650, 8160 Ballast, G2460G Mower, Danuser 20/40, Woods RB60
Aug 11, 2010
84
3
8
Cary, IL
I was going to order some shear bolts for my snow blower. $15 worth of small nuts and bolts, $24 basic shipping. WTF is that? I found close enough to equal parts at my local ACE for $8.00.
 

lugbolt

Well-known member

Equipment
ZG127S-54
Oct 15, 2015
4,807
1,575
113
Mid, South, USA
yeah I ordered some parts from messick. 5 orings and 2 seals, small stuff, would easily fit in an envelope. Almost $20 for shipping.

Out of curiousity, I called the dealer I used to work for and gave them the same part numbers. Grand total with tax was $16 less expensive than Messick.

I understand why, and how, but that doesn't make it any better for most of us.

Don't like his prices, get the stuff u need locally--support your local dealer if possible.
 

Henro

Well-known member

Equipment
B2910, BX2200, KX41-2V mini Ex.
May 24, 2019
5,116
2,341
113
North of Pittsburgh PA
yeah I ordered some parts from messick. 5 orings and 2 seals, small stuff, would easily fit in an envelope. Almost $20 for shipping.

Out of curiousity, I called the dealer I used to work for and gave them the same part numbers. Grand total with tax was $16 less expensive than Messick.

I understand why, and how, but that doesn't make it any better for most of us.

Don't like his prices, get the stuff u need locally--support your local dealer if possible.
What doesn't register for me is that I can buy $35 or so of something from Walmart, Lowes, Amazon and other places and have it delivered for free to my home.

Just seems like a 2+2 doesn't equal 4. Perhaps Messicks and other tractor dealers should sign up with someone like Amazon or Walmart, give them their cut, and make money on increased sales generated by free shipping.

Of course, maybe their mark up is small enough that this is not reasonable.

I wish I had a local dealer! Closest one to me is 90 minutes round trip...when the weather is good.
 

ctfjr

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Lifetime Member

Equipment
L3800HST
Dec 7, 2009
1,685
1,865
113
central ct
If you are in business you understand that a customer's 'average order size' to a very large extent determines their profitability. You can make the case that a local dealer will try to be competitive on small $$ items with the hope that the customer will also buy the big ticket items from him. Buying is for many a relationship interaction. Maybe not so much on the internet where many businesses treat the sale as one ofs - the customer may never come back.
Amazon is a real exception to that. They try to make it so easy for the customer that there is no comparison shopping. When there is, they know if they are 'close enough' they will get the order.
Amazon is the 1st place I go when shopping for an item. Then I know the most I have to pay for it. If its of any significant $$'s I'll google it and search. I'm willing to pay 3-4% more for their conveniences (free shipping, easy returns and Prime discount). I'm sure I'm not the only one who has discovered that on some products they are really high on pricing.
The example I give our salespeople is the oil customer one (I am in the wholesale distribution business). If I am your oil customer and buy 10,000 gallons of fuel oil a year from you am I a good customer (the average customer around here uses less than 1000)? Invariably they all say yes indeed. Then I ask, "What if I take it 50 gallons at a time?" If you had enough customers like that you would be out of business in short order because you would lose $$ on every sale.

I can understand why posters here feel they are getting ripped off on high shipping charges but there is the other side of the coin.
 

GeoHorn

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Lifetime Member

Equipment
M4700DT, LA1002FEL, Ferguson5-8B Compactor-Roller, 10KDumpTrailer, RTV-X900
May 18, 2018
5,575
2,942
113
Texas
When I took my tractor to the local dealer, they did the repair, and charged me $15 shipping for a few washers to increase the pressure in my hydraulic system. I asked at the parts counter if it was a stock part, and he said, how many do you want? 25 in stock at all times. It is just another way that some dealers rip off the customer. I was having breakfast with a friend that went there the day before to get a price on a new tractor, since they are in the town next to him. After hearing about my experience, he bought his tractor 40 miles away, and they matched the price, and delivered it to him the next day. The local dealer wanted $45 delivery fee. I won't ever deny a business making a profit, but I will not stand to be gouged. I prefer to shop local, but when a local store wants to screw you over, I vote with my money, and go elsewhere.
That method will work better only if you let the offending dealer KNOW that’s what your reaction is.

I told a local business about an almost identical situation...and they explained why it happened in that fashion and immediately corrected the invoice. (The work order specified to perform a certain modification using ”kit” such-and-such.... which they ordered and that carried a shipping-charge. The small parts in that “kit” were ordinary items carried locally. It was basically a service-writer versus part—counter communications mix-up. That dealer understood my complaint, ate that shipping,... and has my regular-business as the result.
If you don’t let the offending dealer know the problem.... then your result will be driving that 40 miles over and over in order to avoid a simple communication problem.

Some dealers with a super on-line-presence have a software add-on that allows a customer to see what the shipping is up-front for special orders.... but a personal call to their parts-counter will supply the part with a much lower shipping-cost if the part can be bundled-in with that dealers’ weekly shipments instead of ordering a $2 switch as a special/individual order. This exact thing happened to me. I needed a loader part which cost $17 but the shipping was $22. The parts-guy was smart enough to ask how quickly I needed that part... and I wasn’t in a hurry.... so he included it in his weekly inventory updates.... and it arrived a week later $17 with ZERO shipping costs for me. (He called me to let me know it came in ..... and I forgot about it. After 3 weeks they returned it to the warehouse. I called about a month later to inquire...they looked at their records and saw I’d been notified and failed to pick up... and told me that. My memory then snapped-into-place and I apologized.
”No problem,”, he said, “I’ll re-order it for you.”
THey did...and the next time they notified me the part had arrived you can be sure I showed up and paid the $17 for it!
 
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GreensvilleJay

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Equipment
BX23-S,57 A-C D-14,58 A-C D-14, 57 A-C D-14,tiller,cults,Millcreek 25G spreader,
Apr 2, 2019
9,672
3,922
113
Greensville,Ontario,Canada
It's a 'numbers game'..
Consider a small distributor/parts seller. Your order comes in. Someone has to get the 'pull ticket', find the parts, check them off, package them up, make a shipping label and sit it 'somewhere' for someone to 'deliver it'. Say it takes that 'someone' 1/2 hr to do all that (he's working FAST BTW !), @$15/hr..it cost the company $7.50 for 'handling'. Oh yeah..forgot, needs a box, packing and label....say $2.50 for that stuff..so now $10 TRUE money spent BEFORE it gets to courier(USPS, UPS,XYZ ?? THAT has to cost $10.. so now there's $20 real money spent for 'shipping and handling'. A BIG business can 'eat' that cost over 100s of sales, the little guy can't.
It's a 'numbers' game.
 

bx tractorjoe

Active member

Equipment
kubota l2501 upgraded from a bx23s john deere 670 husquarvana huv 4421 gxp
Jun 3, 2020
258
140
43
loxahatchee flordia
That's odd.. I ordered 2 fuel filters, oil filter and air cleaner for a bx and shipping was 15.54. that was during the ice storm too
 

lugbolt

Well-known member

Equipment
ZG127S-54
Oct 15, 2015
4,807
1,575
113
Mid, South, USA
yeah compare a little small dealer to amazon

amazon has MUCH more buying power. They can (and do) dictate the pricing, much the same as walmart homerdepot, lowes, target, etc.

years ago I developed a fishing lure that works great here, apparently other areas too. Patented, marketed it to local retailers. To get a larger venue, I paid a company to try to sell it to walmart. You have to jump through hoops. In the process they try to negotiate you down and a lot of times below your cost, becoming reliant on volume alone. This is called mass marketing. There "is" some money in mass marketing but it requires investments to be made in order to become profitable.

In my case, I chose to stay small. Eventually most of the product was sold, and now marketed under a different brand. I kept some for myself and family

With that said, you'd think that small mom-and-pop outfits would be more expensive every time. Not always. Larger corporate dealerships (and sometimes you don't know if they are corporate until you just ask) have more buying power than smaller ones, but they also have higher bills to pay at the end of the month/quarter/year, so even though they buy cheaper, they sell for the same price as everyone else, to pay for their higher bills. That describes what I went through at a dealer I worked at.

Kinda off-topic but kubota is going the direction of deere, they are liking it when a small dealer is getting bought out and run by larger corporations and dealer chains. Deere did a lot of that stuff in the 1990's and 2000's, and continuing to do it today, and it "changes" the entire brand. Sometimes not for the good either. I got out while I could but still keep up to date with what's going on.

Corporate sucks!!

Kubota (and many other dealers/retailers) have something called MSRP. Manufacturer's suggested retail price. Messicks, as a generality, sells slightly below msrp. But they make it up on shipping so you end up paying about the same from them as you would at your local dealer. Pretty common among online retail outfits. They sell by price and then S&H makes it up. I did it too when I worked at the dealer, by direction of corporate. Their S&H budget was in the red, so I (we) had to hike it to cover "expenses"--which keep going up about every 3 months on average. UPS/Fedex/DHL/CCS/USPS don't work for free. A lot of times we had to hike the S&H costs to cover employee (or employeR) bonuses, and a what I did see a lot of was shipper rate hikes that would occur suddenly, after you quote a rate to a customer. You (as a dealer employee) usually lost money in those situations. Sometimes a few pennies but it adds up quickly with volume and trust me--corporate doesn't like to see lost money, whether it be a penny or a dollar, you're going to get a butt chewing!! The website is usually run by an outside entity and does not stay totally up-to-date, so when a customer would go to check out and I get the ticket on it to pull what they ordered, the actual shipping costs would be higher than what was charged, resulting in a S&H loss. Again usually not a lot of money but it adds up.

used to be that people would buy online and save the tax. Now that most places are charging tax for even online purchases, it's almost exactly the same cost to buy online as it is to buy local once it's all said and done. The difference is--convenience. We are a society of convenience, so if we don't have to get out of the easy chair to go pick up a part at the dealer, we will order it online and wait for it to show up at the front door. I know there's exceptions but that's a generality. Online retail outfits take full advantage of convenience, as I did when I was doing dealer work. With the pandemic, even more so as we've been conditioned to stay in, so when we needed a spark plug for a lawn mower, we'd just order it from amazon...pay a little more for it but we didn't have to leave the house.
 
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Justasquid

Member

Equipment
L4240HSTC
Nov 2, 2020
96
44
18
Michigan
It does suck for sure. I just ordered a couple of fittings. Realistically probably cost around $8 to ship. But they charged $18. I know a lot of places put a certain margin on anything they do. So if they have a set margin, they add that then what ever box they use is charged. (surprisingly boxes can be pricey). Then they have a dedicated staff to only sales and shipping. once all that factors in, it’s no surprise their shipping is so much. It’s pretty interesting how large that portion of their business is, so I imagine the overhead is considerable.

Having said that, I would rather pay the $18 to get it shipped to my door versus driving 40 minutes one way to the closest dealer. Fuel and time I waste doing that is kind of a wash for me.
 

arto98607

Member

Equipment
Kubota F3060, Grasshopper 721D, Ford 1310, JD 440 ICD, JD 300
Aug 24, 2014
64
4
8
Southwest WA State
I ordered four internal O-rings for Kubota F3060 HST from Messick's on February 21st (Sunday) at a total cost of $14.55 of which $10.30 was for USPS Priority Mail.

The parts arrived on Wednesday February 24th in my mailbox here on the west coast.

That was an excellent service and I am very happy with them!

I have ordered various Kubota & Ford / New Holland parts from them around 10 times over the last few years and they have always done a very good job and made no errors so far!


Mechanic.jpg
 

William1

Well-known member
Lifetime Member

Equipment
BX25D
Jul 28, 2015
1,080
263
83
Richmond, Virginia
As far as shipping goes, I do find it interesting when an expensive part can be found cheap with free shipping but the inexpensive parts are about the same and the shipping often is as much or more than the part.

As far as Kubota parts go, my dealer is 35 miles from me. But... The parts manager lives a few miles from me. I place 'stock' orders so no shipping and I meet him on his way home from work a scant two miles from my house. :)
 
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D2Cat

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L305DT, B7100HST, TG1860, TG1860D, L4240
Mar 27, 2014
12,901
4,266
113
40 miles south of Kansas City
Folks focus on shipping charges and sometimes delivery is more important then shipping cost. I've purchased three items in the last two weeks that say I will receive in 5-7 days. Best that was done was 8 days, and not to long ago the item would arrive in 2-3 days. Everything is blamed on covid and workers not there to do normal duties.
 

Njtool

Well-known member

Equipment
Lx2610 HSDC. BH77 backhoe
Jan 1, 2021
216
279
63
New jersey
It makes me wonder how much is actually because of Covid. And how many layers deep it goes.
For instance, more people are ordering things so that would slow everything down. Workers could be sick. Etc.

Or maybe it’s just a convenient excuse to blame everything on.

I’m still waiting for the dealer to get stuff for my tractor that I bought in December
 

Henro

Well-known member

Equipment
B2910, BX2200, KX41-2V mini Ex.
May 24, 2019
5,116
2,341
113
North of Pittsburgh PA
I am having second thoughts about having signed up for this forum in the first place!
Don't be too quick to judge. This is a great place to find help with Kubota tractors. Now and then a thread does go off topic though, but it is actually pretty rare.

Edit: AND people here are really pretty nice people...
 

D2Cat

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Lifetime Member

Equipment
L305DT, B7100HST, TG1860, TG1860D, L4240
Mar 27, 2014
12,901
4,266
113
40 miles south of Kansas City
I am having second thoughts about having signed up for this forum in the first place!
Welcome to the forum, and don't let one of these peeing contest get you sidetracked. Just remember the title of the offensive thread and skip it if you don't like the content.
 
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