Janel online slow on shipping, poor customer service. Any good alternatives?

[motocoder]

I posted a question about where to buy a JBC soldering station, and a number of people recommended Janel Online.

I'm curious why people recommend this place? It took them forever to ship the soldering station. Now another order I placed with them, earlier this week, with 2 day shipping, has STILL not shipped. Sort of defeats the purpose of 2 day shipping when the merchant sits on it for a week.

From my perspective, they suck. Are there some good alternatives out there that also stock soldering equipment and supplies?

[nanofrog]

Will depend on what you're looking for. For example, Janel was indicated because you were looking specifically for JBC products (only aware of JBC and Howard Electronics as being JBC distributors in the US).

FWIW, I've had good luck with the following for soldering equipment, tools, and supplies:
All-Spec
Techni-Tool
TEquipment.net
Digikey
Newark
Mouser
Allied Electronics
Future Electronics

Also, I've found verifying things prior to ordering (and any follow ups) tend to go better over the phone. Can sometimes get you better pricing too, even if there's a listed/online price. 

[motocoder]

I think I will cancel my order with them and go with either Howard Electronics or JBC directly.

I'm not interested in an online vendor that requires me to follow up by phone to get my order out the door in under a week.

[Circuitous]

I ordered my JBC station from https://www.bluethundertechnologies.com
   because their site specifically said the products were in-stock and ready to ship...
After more than a week of waiting I called them about my order.  It turns out that was a complete lie, they didn't (2 years ago) actually stock any JBC stations. 

I'm not sure why it's so difficult to get JBC stations here.

After my experience with Blue Thunder, I have ordered my tips and an extra handle from Janelonline.   Janel has shipped promptly and everything has gone smoothly.

Sorry to hear of your experience with Janel.

[motocoder]

They STILL haven't shipped, and their site won't let me cancel. Have to call them,  on Monday, I suppose.

[mazurov]

I'm curious why people recommend this place? It took them forever to ship the soldering station. Now another order I placed with them, earlier this week, with 2 day shipping, has STILL not shipped. Sort of defeats the purpose of 2 day shipping when the merchant sits on it for a week.

How are their prices comparing to other places? See, fast shipping costs extra money.  That extra money must come from somewhere, typically from the margins; at the same time, product price attracts people better than anything else so it sometimes makes sense to sell cheaper and have one person (or less) shipping dept. Also, no one wants to advertise "out of stock" status; it could be that folks haven't had it when you placed an order.

Places like Sparkfun and Adafruit (and big distributors like Mouser/DigiKey and friends) ship very fast. I live 15 minutes away from Sparkfun (and the road is even better since they moved about a week ago) and pickup orders are often ready in less than an hour. However, when I'm not in a hurry I buy from China and wait 2-3 weeks, spending 50-95% less.

tl/dr: pick your poison

[PlainName]

See, fast shipping costs extra money.

I thought the OP was complaining of non-shipping, and noting that two-day shipping is meaningless if the stuff never gets out the door.

I may be missing something (feel free to put me right!) but I can't see how it costs the vendor more to have it shipped today than next week. He does the same work and pays the same price (to the shipper) after all, regardless of when he gets around to it. We are not talking how fast the shipper delivers it, but when the vendor can be arsed to give it to the shipper.

[mazurov]

I may be missing something (feel free to put me right!) but I can't see how it costs the vendor more to have it shipped today than next week.

Depends on how many people are doing shipping and how often. You may buy from someone who is running business on the side and ships only on Saturdays. Imagine now the guy has had a good week and has more packages to ship than he can process in one day - some customers would have to wait till next Saturday. The alternative would be to hire someone to do shipping every day and this someone's pay would be the cost associated with fast shipping.

To me, the issue is wrong expectations - there is just a handful of companies from which you could expect the speed of order fulfillment that matches that of Amazon's. If you're buying from any other company and need your stuff fast, contact the company to find out. If you don't get an answer in a day or two this will mean you won't get your stuff fast (or ever). Find a different vendor, repeat. Communicating with sellers is a useful skill to acquire anyway - from what I see e-commerce is only getting sloppier, especially in niche markets.

[PlainName]

You may buy from someone who is running business on the side and ships only on Saturdays

That's a fair point, although I would massively mark down a vendor for not saying that up-front, and give him extra days on the Styx for implying otherwise with the two-day thing

[mazurov]

You may buy from someone who is running business on the side and ships only on Saturdays

That's a fair point, although I would massively mark down a vendor for not saying that up-front, and give him extra days on the Styx for implying otherwise with the two-day thing

This would only make sense if you have a choice. On the other hand, if what you need is only available from the manufacturer and a couple of obscure shops then marking them down (or fighting for better customer service any other way) won't make any difference.

[Bud]

I placed an order with Janel yesterday night at 9pm and today at 3pm I got a notice of shipment with a tracking number.

[motocoder]

I placed an order with Janel yesterday night at 9pm and today at 3pm I got a notice of shipment with a tracking number.

I guess they just hate me or something. No idea what the issue is. It ended up being a week after I ordered before they shipped.

[motocoder]

Just got a private message from user, janelonline. It seems they are not happy with my thread, and are trying to get Dave to remove it.

I think it's important that vendors take responsibility for their actions, and not try to cover up customer service issues by having threads deleted.

[motocoder]

Here's the message they sent me (seems like they are confusing me with Dave):

Hi Dave,

Regrettably, I am not quite positive what you are referencing.

In terms of the initial issue, our search experts advised us to put in a request to remove your thread, stating, “Janel Online Sucks," as it is an extremely negative comment and is not representative of our brand. We are extremely pleased to receive feedback from our customers, and to see our brand being mentioned in either a negative or positive light. As it offers actionable insight, in order to improve upon our service. However, the search team believed that the particular topic posted was an attack specific to the company, in the sense that a topic was generated, to “rally” up other users, and for that reason, brand defamation would be of a particular concern.

In any event, we are sorry that you had an unsatisfying experience through ordering online. We noticed in another post, a further complaint on your end of our services, and another user advised you to call our 800 number at the top of the screen.  It seemed that you did do that, and everything was resolved, fairly easily.  We’re working our best, to serve our customers the best products in the most timely fashion possible.

I'll post my reply if possible. I didn't save the text, and it isn't showing up in my Sent Items list yet.

[Brumby]

I see the thread title has been changed to something a bit less evocative.

[motocoder]

I see the thread title has been changed to something a bit less evocative.

Yes, I changed that. Here is my reply to them:

I find it quite amazing that you're sending me an email on an issue that occurred 130+ days ago. Is there any better indicator that your response times are slow - the topic of the thread in question?

I've changed the title of the thread to be more representative of the actual issue, and to remove the word "sucks". I am not willing to take the thread down, as everything in the thread is 100% accurate. Regarding the call, your support team resolved nothing. I called to find out why my order was taking so long to ship, and then it shipped. This does not resolve the poor customer experience of taking more than a week to ship a product for which the customer paid for 2-day shipping. At no point did I receive an explanation, an apology, or any sort of renumeration for the money wasted on 2-day shipping. I can't think of another vendor that has treated me that way.

Instead of running around trying to clean up your search results, I suggest you spend that money on improving your web ordering process.

And by the way, my name is not "Dave"... I guess this reply was meant to go to the site owner.

I've since learned that they were doing some things that have led to them being banned from the forum. So it's non-issue at this point. I won't be doing business with them again.

[TheSteve]

I've since learned that they were doing some things that have led to them being banned from the forum. So it's non-issue at this point. I won't be doing business with them again.

So they do indeed suck...

[EEVblog]

I've since learned that they were doing some things that have led to them being banned from the forum.

Yes, they were banned for sockpuppeting.

[motocoder]

Yes, they were banned for sockpuppeting.

That's a good name for it. I hadn't heard that before.