Official Luthiers Forum!

I want to lead by emphasizing how much I love StewMac, and how much I appreciate the value provided by my StewMax membership. We are all lucky to have a company like StewMac serving our needs in this instrument building/repair endeavor, regardless of whether we do it for money, fun, or both. Thanks for being here, StewMac!

Against this backdrop of appreciation, I had a snag here recently with an order. My StewMac orders normally arrive in 2 days, thanks to my proximity to Athens, OH (1.5 hours away), and StewMac’s normal choice of UPS as the shipping carrier. But the terms of StewMax membership make it clear that StewMac gets to pick the carrier, and in this instance, they chose the USPS. Not Priority Mail, but Ground Advantage.

Well, when it comes to the USPS, and any service other than Priority Mail, all I can say is my favorite Southern insult: Bless their hearts. They failed to scan the package for tracking until a week after I placed the order, and when they did, the package was in Detroit, which is over twice the distance from Athens, OH to where I live, in the opposite direction. The package is still up there in the Motor City, and is probably another several days away. Quite a different experience, compared to my normal 2 day turnaround for StewMac orders.

Anyway, I have suggested to StewMac that, if there were a version of StewMax membership that allowed me, the customer, to pick the shipping carrier, I would eagerly pay more money for that type of StewMax membership. For me, my incident rate of problems with the USPS is really high, so I try to avoid it (except for Priority Mail, which works great). I would gladly pay more if I could ask StewMac to use a different carrier.

I mention all of this in case some of you are interested in having similar discussions with StewMac. The more people who want something, the more likely it can happen.

I’ll end the way I started: by praising StewMac. They are great to deal with, and this snag in my order is not their fault. But it would be great if I could tailor my StewMax membership to avoid issues like what I describe above. If others would like that, too, maybe you can offer that feedback to StewMac as the opportunities arise.

I share your sentiment, USPS often means delayed packages for me, and their tracking is awful. Sometimes when I am ordering something small that I know will get sent via USPS, I go ahead and add a neck blank or something larger to bump myself up to one of the better carriers.

Now they are offering StewMax "standard" shipping and StewMax 2-day shipping at checkout. I've only noticed this recently, so I'm not sure if they're defaulting more things to USPS or if the neck blank trick is still effective.

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Josh—

I’m not sure whether StewMac is trying to increase its use of the USPS overall. The customer service rep and I did not discuss that. I can understand their desire to pay less for shipping as part of this membership program, but if there are significantly more problems over time, that has to show up in their customer feedback. All I know for sure is that “included in the price” shipping is only a benefit to me if it is reliable and prompt, and the USPS (other than Priority Mail) is the opposite of those things. So, if I have more experiences like this over time, it will affect my choice whether to stick with the StewMax membership or go without it. I’m pretty spoiled by my normal 2 day turnaround for orders, so I will gravitate toward whatever lets me keep that going.

I couldn't agree more. Love StuMac and part of that has always been fast shipping even in my rural living. Been a member since day one and my only complaint prior to membership was when I screwed up and had to add some small item I forgot the next day and had to pay what seemed like a high shipping charge for a small item.

Then came a membership with free shipping and EVERYTHING was great!

If they start going with USPS, I'll be mighty disappointment.

My experience with USPS for the last couple years has been absolutely terrible. Just in the last month or so, I've had priority mail take almost 2 weeks to reach the destination (CONUS) and once it is a day or two past the promised 3 days, the tracking just quits reporting it. Most of the recent priority mail was sending checks to someone for wood. On one of those a second check was sent with 2 day delivery USPS service and it took 5 to get there. The first check got there 11 days late! IMO USPS is totally unreliable.

Back to StuMac, I'd rather see the same membership delivery we all love but maybe put a 2 package a month free shipping limit as an option. If it is shipping costs driving a shipping change by SM, I'd pay more for the membership to keep the old delivery system intact as is.

Hope they read this. Contacting them has gotten a lot harder too.

Long Live StuMac.

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Brian R, Wood Mechanic
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