I agree they just don't care but I do as it hits my bottom line too. And it was us small businesses that built these companies but they don't care. Enough of us quits it might get their attention.
It sorta like A&I demanding me to spend at $2K with per year when I could easily done that last year if their products were up to par and the sales rep actually did his job when I ask for sales support. They are threatening to cut me off but said they are willing for me to buy from another A&I dealer which is not going to happen as I know the amount of mark-up involved. Most likely I will just dump them first and switch over to Oregon and Stens more; so much for a 12yrs business relationship. The killer is high shipping rates for smaller than $200 orders which would ship for free if order $200.01 or more. But on a $192 order they had hit me for $45 in shipping charges. Ouch.
And yes I have ran into several places that simply refuses cash payments locally. I have not used physical checks in several years here but it is because of the untimely mail times.
The situation with your telcom is sorta like it was with me and Power Distributors. I tried to get them to give me the same discount price on parts as I got through A&I but they simply decided to close my account instead.
And yes I do realize I like poppy seed in an ocean of whales so I don't even matter to them.
People do not seem to get the CEO / MBA mentality
A business to them is something they buy & sell the same as you buy parts & sell them.
And all business are the same so customers do not matter unless they account for a double digit percentage of income .
Most of them do not even see a number that is lower than 100,000 if not 1,000,000.
Because of the low par stock nearly every order I place has at least 1 item go to back order.
Then All Power had the Stens distribution contract I had a long chat with one of the accounts staff who ended up doing a spreadsheet recording the number of backorder deliveries where their actual freight cost exceeded the gross mark up on the part .
Ended up being around $ 30,000 / month
The
As for freight charges, they are a policy matter but as you should know, it costs money to pick, pack & post an order plus more to raise an invoice then recieve the money . The WWW has now widened price shopping so having the lowest price on the web is now a big money maker .
To do that you cut your margins ( and squeeze your suppliers ) .
Again in the minds of the MBA managers you work out the fixed costs of running the warehouse then add an amount to recover this money from the least profitable sales, the idea being that it will ( & does ) encourage customers to place larger orders which are usually more profitable to fill .
FWIW, the biggest wholesalers do not do free freight for orders under $ 1000 and only then to customers who pay on invoice.
The second biggest wholesalers do not do free freight either but discount 5% if you pay on the delivery day and that discount goes down to 0 % each week till you get to 30 days.
Freight charges are a good way to evaluate the efficency of a warehouse, those that are run properly with suficient volume have very low freight rates .