Chandleries (grrrr!)

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DevonMark

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I went into a certain chandlery in Plymouth yesterday to buy a spool of nylon thread. It was £6.99. The women serving refused to to charge it to my debit card because her boss had told her to only take orders over £10 to reduce costs. This despite them being happy to take my card when I spent £70 there the week before. Having no cash on me and feeling pretty disgusted I went to another outlet close by to buy said item and source some guardrail netting. Marlow netting was £2.99 a metre. This sounded rather expensive as I was sure that I had seen the same netting in a certain Scottish chandlery catalogue for half the price. Phone wife to ask her to look and she confirmed that the price was £1.53. Went home, phoned mail order company, chatted to friendly salesman, ordered netting and some other items, paid express delivery and items arrived this morning.

Moral of story? - I have a new boat and probably will be spending thousands of pounds on stuff over the next couple of years. The first business has lost my custom because they have not put the customer first, the second has lost my custom because they are trying to rip me off. The mail order company has won a customer. Where possible I will now buy items from the small chandlery next to my marina. Where this is not possible I will use the mail order company.

Your thoughts welcome!

Mark
 
I suspect I would have suggested to the first outlet that they open an account for me and I pay by card once the account gets above a specified limit.
Mail order is very well, but the real value of a local chandler is being able to get hands on a widget at very short notice. You may come to value your local chandler when you are able to go sailing rather than waiting for the postman.
 
It's not just chandleries - internet companies don't have the same overheads and sell in bigger numbers. The local book shop can't compete with Waterstones online, nor the local grocers with Tesco. We need to accept that we will pay for convenience, local shops to browse in, local employment etc.

And don't blame them from putting a limit on cards - they need to make a profit and without doing so they will not survive. Then you'll be saying "guess what, I had to drive 5 miles to get a shackle".

Granted there is some mickey taking with prices but you have to accept some.
 
As a merchant the vendor will be charge a fixed fee for processing a debit card transaction. If I remember correctly around 20 or 25p - so would have cost them 3.5% of their margin. On Credit cards the fee is % based. On high volumes say 1 mil a months plus this could be around 1.5% of the transaction. Upper limit for smaller merchants I could not say but probably up to as much as 3.5%. In a very low margin buisness this obviously has an impact on profitability but I am guessing they have pretty good margin, albeit low volume. To turn a regular/potential customer off by sticking rigily to a rule seems very foolish.
 
Back in the winter I discovered that a local chandlery charges more for the same item if you buy it over the counter than online even though the stock comes off the same shelf! I queried this and was told that by coming into the shop I was "taking up time" and this was reflected in the price. However if I were to quote the online price at the check out then they would honour that price. They wouldn't be prepared to look up these prices themselves though. Obviously in this case knowledge is power.
 
I use a local chandler when I need something now, although last Saturday they had sold out. I also found teh chandlery selling light bulbs at £4.99 each online, whereas teh electrical suppliers were charging 80 pence. Seem reasonable? I get most of my simple hardware (shackles etc) on line at about 30% of the chandleries, they arrive the next day, at home, and I don't have to divery to the chandlers to get them. If chandleries want to keep business with the majority of small yachtsman then they are going have to come up with a new business strategy to compete with the online sales.

I do however believe they have a role to play when providing equipment with advice, such as electronics systems, and I am prepared to pay a premium for that. However, often the staff in chandleries have less knowledge than I do, so exactly what service are they providing then?
 
Stainless steel ball valves for sea cocks, local swindlery........£56 plus vat.
Same (make and all) valve from specialist plumbing suppliers......£29 plus vat.
No prizes for guessing who got my money. Mike.
 
Cash is not "free", it costs companies to bank cash too (fees, time spent going to bank, security issues, employee fraud, etc.) - why do you think the supermarkets offer cashback? - it is a way of getting rid of their cash in a cost effective manner.... With chip and pin paying is also faster than with cash. All-in-all I doubt there is a significant saving in taking cash.

I am all for supporting local businesses, I was just pointing out that it is a two-way street. Luckily the chandlery next to my marina is much more customer friendly and last week were quite happy to take a card for a packet of cable ties (£3).

Mark
 
I think if you re-read my post you will find I was agreeing that it was not a sensible business decision to turn down your transaction.

Of course cash is not free but the cost is not so clear to the small business as a statement showing charges from the merchant.
 
You are right, especially as this was not a "cost", i.e. they would still be making a profit after transaction charges. In fact the time I spent arguing with the saleswoman probably cost them more than the charges... and they didn't make a sale at the end of it!

Mark
 
Do I get a prize for guessing the first chandlery?

Perhaps at a marina a little north of where you are? /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 
Yes! Grrr! I'm re-fitting an old boat so went to Pirates Caves chandlery at boatyard, and asked for discount on £2k spend over early summer. Said I'd support them rather than shopping around. Told to email list to them, they would quote. Emailed the list to them, no reply. Sent fax to named person, still no reply. Not even the courtesy of a polite "No, sorry we can't oblige." I got the message though.

Still go there for odd bits (perhaps they're happy with that.) But not for major items. Found a lot of wholesale type places round the Hamble too, much cheaper, on-line too. That chandlery has lost a lot of my business, and much more in the future. Just by not replying.
 
Generally a lot of companies offer cheaper prices online and I've never had any problem getting the online price in the shop.

Once of twice I've found the cheapest deal on the internet then walked over to the local big name high street shop (not necessarily the one I found the deal at) and ask them to price match. Not always, but they often will, especially if I point out that if they don't, I'm sure their competitor round the corner will. Who wants the money?

I was looking at some webbing to get some jackstays made. 3 tonne, 25mm, Jackstay polyester webbing at sailcloth.co.uk. £0.98/meter.

25mm jackstay webbing at jimmygreen.co.uk £2.25/m

pays to shop around.
 
Reading through the original post I wondered whether the chandlery in question is quite a sizeable one for the area and based right on the entrance to an MDL marina.

If this is the case open an account there and not only can you pay at the end of the month but you also get a 15% discount on all purchases, unless already on special offer.
 
[ QUOTE ]
Cash is not "free", it costs companies to bank cash too (fees, time spent going to bank, security issues, employee fraud, etc.) - why do you think the supermarkets offer cashback? - it is a way of getting rid of their cash in a cost effective manner.... With chip and pin paying is also faster than with cash. All-in-all I doubt there is a significant saving in taking cash.



[/ QUOTE ]

As a retailer I can tell you now that cash can be free to bank it all depends on your set up with the banks. Of course the time going there etc is going to cost but I'm lucky ours is round the corner.
Chip and pin is not quicker to pay than cash in fact it can be decidedly slower, too often I've been waiting behind someone paying by plastic that has taken what seems to be ages but I'm a patient man.

We do not accept plastic at all in our shop on account of the costs, the providers (banks etc) want too much of our profits for the privelege of accepting the cards on their behalf. They effectively take a cut from the retailer and the cardholder.
If we were to take cards our only option would be to charge an extra percentage on top for all card transactions, unfair as I see it really. so we don't do cards for those reasons and I only lose about two sales a year because of it as the cashpoint is only round the corner for those people that want to be like royalty and not carry cash.

Touchpaper lit . . . . . now retiring to a safe distance
/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 
[ QUOTE ]
T_C - first is a warehouse type (you know the one), second is where you suggest.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thought so /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Did you know that the second one has an online PC & offer a web price match /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
hmm you went shopping and didnt even have £7 on you ?I m not Surprised they chucked you out of the shop /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 
I can't remember the last time I paid for something in cash apart from the supermarket/marina trolley (and I get my money back with that one). As far as I am concerned cash is for icecreams, pints and the RNLI box. This is the 21st century isn't it?
 
I have some sympathy with chandleries. On the Cr Card issue they also have to cope with reconciliation of their chits with the money credited by the credit card company as well as paying the credit card charges and suffering the odd charge back because someone forgot what they spent the money on or the weekend staff screwed up the transaction. On a Cr Card transaction under a fiver they would probably loose money. I think £10 is a bit harsh though. I suspect that you were unlucky that there wasn’t some one around senior enough to bend the rules for you.

On the forum chandleries are often called “Swindleries”. I think this is unfair. Their markups are usually higher than other trades but consider. If you had to open and staff a shop seven days a week, stock lots of slow moving items and sell very little at all for six months of the year - how would you price your goods?

On the Thames in my part of the world we have lost Crevalds, Tims, Gibbs, Walton Marine chandlers and one in Kingston. These are just the closed chandlers that I can think of. The convenience is disappearing.

On the other hand I have no sympathy for mail order chandlers who, apart from a few special offers usually sell their wares at the same RRP yet they don’t have to run a shop at all and can staff their storeroom from 9 to 5 Monday to Friday. Some do have catalogue costs but how do you justify that to someone who orders from the on line catalogue which is full of listings cribbed from the manufacturers - or even sometimes even linked to the manufacturers. The Scottish Mail order chandlery mentioned elsewhere in this thread started out bucking the trend with many leisure items below RRP but even they now for the most part seem to tow the line.
 
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