GRIMCOOOOO!! ANYONE ELSE HAVING PROBLEM WITH THEM?

[Texas_Signmaker]

Around here Reece has the worst phone system, or more likely the people operating it are the worst. Call, get put on hold, operator answers "I'd like to place an order" , "Please hold" get transfered to voicemail, then back to operator, then again 5 more times, then hang up, then call again and say " Do you want my order?" then transfer again and again, then talk to a rude sales person who curses on the phone.

 

[signmania]

I think you're in Missouri? If so, what about Midwest Sign & Screen? I get vinyl & ink out of their Omaha branch and if I order by 3 I get it next day by UPS (you can request other carriers). They sell a lot of their vinyl by the yard, and if I need something drop shipped I don't pay shipping if it's over $150. I get most of my .080 aluminum from Grimco (Chicago) and have had excellent service from them, but even with the vinyl mask I still get a lot of blanks (6x12, 12x18, 18x24, 24x36) scratched. They don't always package them well.

 

[ADuke]

The company I used to work for used Midwest Sign & Screen printing Supply. The local branch here in Minnesota was always good. They have a branch located in Kansas City, MO that may or may not be near you. Maybe check them out?

 

[unclebun]

I'm surprised at the difficulty you're having with Grimco, but it may be just local to the branch in Kansas City. My delivery comes from Springfield now, though when I started it was St Louis. But for us, all cut vinyl is shipped UPS free from St Louis, and arrives the next day, which it would for you too. We use primarily Avery, which they don't stock much of, but even drop shipped direct from Avery it's 2 days and still free. When I call them, pretty much all the reps there know us and I don't have to deal with any specific person. It really should be the same for you. Perhaps you should call them some time when you are not ordering something in a rush and talk to someone about the trouble you're having. Though I haven't been to their Springfield location, I have been to the Fenton location a couple of times, for an open house, to look at my printer before ordering one, and also to pick up materials I needed in a real rush. I've even arranged to have my brother in law pick up some ink at the KC location to bring down on Friday of a 4th of July weekend so we could print a big banner order. That's what has impressed me is that even though they are a big company all over the country, there are real people there and I've gotten to know them personally.

For that matter, I'm surprised you aren't happy with N. Glantz. I've used them longer than I have Grimco, since they were the primary supplier at the place I worked before I opened my own shop. I still use them as a secondary supplier, especially since their delivery truck runs on a different day of the week. Their prices are a little higher across the board, but the service is great and they sell some things Grimco doesn't.

 

[bannertime]

Only problem I have with Grimco is sometimes I get stuff too fast. Not a bad problem to have, huh? Ordered 2 roils of print vinyl at 10:00 am. They showed up at 2:00. I love em!

Yeah I ordered online at like 11:20am thinking I'd get it the next day. Nope, by 2-3pm it was at my store. I believe our Grimco is pretty great.

 

[Mike Paul]

I don't buy vinyl from Grimco because I get better pricing from my Fellers rep.

I do like the ACM / Max Metal price point from Grimco and have had good luck with it. The problem is when you need it cut... Some locations have a shear and some locations cut it on a panel saw. The panel saw cuts are always terrible and shear cuts are always perfect but come in from a different location.

Needed (4 pc.) 4x8ft sheets of yellow 040 aluminum last week and they (Grimco) turned it down because I wanted one of the sheets cut in half on the shear where they get deliveries from all the time and have the shear.

Called Pioneer Supply, they matched the price, cutting on their shear, and delivering this week...

 

[asd]

nothing but problems with grimco in the last 5 weeks, orders not shipped on time, missing hardware, wrong products the list is endless, just this week I was converting a sign cabinet from fluorescent to leds, got wrong power supplies after we removed the face from the cabinet 25' up in the air an powering the power supplies and no lights started to trouble shoot the problem and come to find out that they shipped 12v not 24v power supplies. quiet frankly fucks ups cost a lot of money, not once a "sorry" has paid for labor and equipment rental

 

[ikarasu]

Grimco has always been great for us. We usually get stuff same, or next day. There is always times when a certain ink is out of stock... But that's why you order ink before you need it, not the moment you need it. We try to order ink when we have 20% left - Sometimes that 20% will last us a day or two, sometimes a month.... Either way, the ink will be used up eventually, so why not have some on hand?

I don't know how it is in America, but at least in Canada the online prices don't reflect the actual prices we get. I'd love to just place an order online... but everytime I E-mail the rep for a quote, it's always 15-20% cheaper than online.Not everything, but quite a bit of what I order. That's about my only complaint... everything else from them is spot on. I've only called in once when I needed a roll of media the next day, they picked up right away, checked the stock and sent it right over. No complaints from us!

 

[Texas_Signmaker]

I don't buy vinyl from Grimco because I get better pricing from my Fellers rep.

I do like the ACM / Max Metal price point from Grimco and have had good luck with it. The problem is when you need it cut... Some locations have a shear and some locations cut it on a panel saw. The panel saw cuts are always terrible and shear cuts are always perfect but come in from a different location.

Needed (4 pc.) 4x8ft sheets of yellow 040 aluminum last week and they (Grimco) turned it down because I wanted one of the sheets cut in half on the shear where they get deliveries from all the time and have the shear.

Called Pioneer Supply, they matched the price, cutting on their shear, and delivering this week...

I used to have them precut until I found it was real easy. I just use a straight edge clamped to the ACM and a box cutter to score it. Then you just bend and pop it off...takes like 60 seconds from start to finish. Cleaner cut then a shear since it's not mashing it down.

 

[BIGMAX]

Since Grimco bought out my supplier "Alumapanal", which would deliver Mon, Wed, Friday. SO O.K. Grimco bought them and I too was taken off their delivery list, even though THEY HVE TO GO RIGHT PAST ME to deliver to others that use them. I contacted them and asked if they would deliver MY order to a friends shop and me just pick it up there. "Sure , NO PROBLEM>" however , they STILL charged me a hefty delivery charge and took nearly 2 weeks to get that refunded. "Sure, no problem!! Still don't understand why they can't deliver when the pas by me going from the Jax. Fl. warehouse to Valdosta,Ga. I'm between to 2 locations. Oh well! My $$$ must not be needed>

 

[johnwon]

Only problem I have with Grimco is sometimes I get stuff too fast. Not a bad problem to have, huh? Ordered 2 roils of print vinyl at 10:00 am. They showed up at 2:00. I love em!

I am with you. I have to watch when I put in the orders, because I'll get substrates delivered a few hours later and won't be ready to put them into the materials shed yet. I've always had great luck with our branch. I normally order online to save the 3% and the system tells me when I'll get it (so I know if it's in stock in our office). I also have no issues hitting the $100 minimum for free shipping which saves on freight/delivery. If they don't have something in stock, it will often be drop shipped from the manufacturer directly to me and if one of my customers wants something that is off the shelf, they will deliver directly to that customer for me - often times for free no matter whether it's with their local truck or UPS. We used to give them about 50% of our business, but these days, they have closer to 80% of our business for sign supplies due to how aggressive they have become on their pricing for us. When I can't get what I want from them, my next call is normally to Fellers. The advantage to Fellers is that we have a local office and if I tell them that I want to Will Call it and they don't have it locally they will then ship it to me for free since it's not my fault that they don't have it in the local office.

One last note about Grimco - if you are buying from someplace else, because Grimco is more expensive, call them and tell them that you have been using another company because of pricing - they will often match that price and it will stay in the system unless you don't order the item for about 6 months. Sometimes you have to ask for them to make the adjustment for future orders too, but I've never been told no. After you do that, go back to online ordering and the price will come up as 3% less than what that matched price was. I've found that they cannot touch the pricing of certain brands of Sandblast Mask compared to Fellers, so there are a few exceptions where they can't price match.