Sounds like you had a plan that involved "questionable" motives. BTW, I bought a car today from Nissan, but asked if I could have BMW deliver it because it was a better deal for me. They said no. I'm aghast.

I have to be honest... I do understand we're on a public forum right now, but regardless you are representing retrogression very poorly. A simple "no, sorry" would have saved me time and trouble. This is just plain insulting.

What? wow. huh? LOL. Would have saved YOU time and trouble? What time? You don't even know what you want to order!

Please let me know who you find that will use your shipping account. I don't think it's fair to say scrod is acting unprofessional or representing retogression poorly. If anything you're the one who undermined a professional resolution to your bizarre request by treating an established online vendor like a ebay seller. You order something, you use their shipping method. Full stop.

Do you pull this **** with amazon? How about nashbar?

I'm sorry, man. You telling me how to go about my shop's business practices isn't insulting at all and I'm out of line.

Oh, and this.

First off, you clearly don't understand what I am asking of retrogression. Using a customer's UPS account is not bizarre, and should be no problem for an "established online vendor". I'm not asking them to use a different shipping method, in fact we didn't even discuss one. I'm not asking them to use a different carrier. A professional resolution would of been a polite "no" from scrod, which I didn't even come close to receiving.

As an online dealer, I can personally tell you that I would never give my potential customers the run-around when they make a request. You can do business however you like, but you will not be doing it with me. Thanks for the info on the leader frames anyway.

Dude, ask bike questions. Not shipping questions. At the end of the day, even if you're looking to save $30-40 on $1000, that's still only 3%. That's a third of my local sales tax. (THAT'S what I meant by "choose your battles").

What you don't know is that you probably could have saved a lot more than that with scrod on your side. Just a couple days ago he offered a member here a soma frame at cost to replace his trashed frame. I'm not saying he would have hooked you up with a frame at cost, but I'm certainly saying that your tactic of coming out of the gate, swinging, fighting for that 3% sure as sh*t shot yourself in the foot for any future dealings and good faith.

Johnson business school answer: I don't even know scrod, and I've never ordered a thing from the guy, but I don't think you're fully considering how competitive it is to be selling anything retail online. The margin you need to operate with online is so slim that any deviation is a big deal. You say that you want to ship your way to save some cash and get some kickback from UPS? Ever consider that maybe that's part of what's keeping him afloat?

A conclusion I'm ok with. If retrogression is indeed scrod's shop, I have no intention of spending my money there. I do agree that this discussion should not have taken place here.
I'm gonna look at what I've chosen so far, and get back with bike questions.

Retrogression does a really good job at offering competitive prices and has a very large, loyal customer base. As easily seen by looking around the forums, I have never - since day one - had any sort of issue going above and beyond for BikeForums members (or any other customer, for that matter) but I'm not about to bend over backwards to let someone walk on me, then insult me in a roundabout way by trying to tell me how "unprofessional" I am.

I didn't give you the "run around". In all honesty, I was blown away by the fact that you'd even ask that of a company. I order things online all the time and would never even think to ask the company I'm buying something from if I can use my own account to get a discount and score points with UPS. It just doesn't work that way.

I'm really sorry your panties are in a bunch because I won't use your UPS account. Our UPS rating matters to us too, which is why we choose to use our own account to ship things. Is that really so outlandish that you can't grasp it? As I said, you can't always have it your way.

Best of luck with your build.

So beautiful... I've dealt with shipping calculators before at my previous job... and have never encountered such a question. Amazing what people will do for a few $$$.

I never once used the word "unprofessional", not sure who you're quoting. Despite your warped understanding of what it means to use a 3rd party UPS account, can we not agree that a simple "no" would have been sufficient?

Close enough for me. You implied it in your own way and I implied "no" in mine. I think I summed it up pretty well by saying this:

Drop it.

Dude, Scrod, you know me - so I apologize up front.

I'm not sure what the scam was, but I think I figured it out in about 10 minutes and I'm just a moron who doesn't run his own business. Why do I say this is a scam? Because you're asking for preferential treatment because a business owner happens to associate himself with an online community of like-minded individuals. How dare I use the word preferential?

pref·er·en·tial   [pref-uh-ren-shuhl] Show IPA
adjective
1.
of, pertaining to, or of the nature of preference: preferential policies.
2.
showing or giving preference: a preferential hiring system.
3.
receiving or enjoying preference, as a country in trade relations; favored.

It is my opinion, and I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I'm right, that you already shopped this idea to other online vendors and found that they refused to accommodate you, you concocted a thread to get Scrod's attention in a public setting and then tried to pull of the "hey buddy, gimme this, but do it in a way you can't un**** yourself when I pull the rug out from under you."

Problems: You did it in public, you already violated BF policy and you went out of your way to continue to garner "support" from this community.

Facts: We will never support screwing over any bike vendor, bike shop, distributor or even an ice cream truck pedophile.

In conclusion, you're wrong. Now go see if anybody will let you take the shipping control of their product away from them to save you a buck.

Before you started talking about shipping, you were on such a good start. The things poeple do for a couple dollars...

No ****, we were all actually offering to help someone this time instead of just nuke them on the spot. GG.

This thread is WAY more entertaining than I thought it would be.

These claims are completely unfounded.
1. I have not contacted any other online retailer.
2. I didn't know who scrod was or of retrogression's existence before this thread.
3. Please show me which policy I violated.
4. I never demanded a single thing from scrod.
5. I have, nor had, any intention of screwing over anyone.

Multiple people in this thread, including scrod, have an insufficient understanding of what I was looking to have done, which has ultimately brought about these conspiracy theories. I agree it was inappropriate of me to make my request here, on this forum. I should have just called and asked the next time retro was open. I got my answer, hard as it was, and I'm attempting to let this argument die.

What retailers have you successfully arranged this with?

LOL, with everything that's being made in China these days, it's almost laughable that anyone says anything about margins on product and how competitive it is ? Competition really is a matter of being within a competitive retail price for other on-line vendors and the markups are at least double for retail, if not insanely more ? I mean a lot of on-line vendors are somewhere USA local brick & mortar retail outlets anyway and they aren't giving any price breaks that they still aren't making their margins on. Using another's UPS account in this day and age really isn't a big deal. Some vendor's low ball a price and then charge on the back end for S&H, it's done on ebay all the time. And as for UPS, very little difference in the price from vendor to vendor when true S&H costs are charged. It's really weight and distances by zip code. Shipping is a matter of putting it on the next plane or truck that is going there anyway, yeah, like there isn't room on the next delivery out in a 1/2 empty vehicle ?

A Kinesis carbon fork would run half of a Leader fork.







Most vendors on ebay even ship for free.

Lol, shipping aint dat srs.

You're absolutely right. I was completely in the wrong. Obviously, the first thing you did was come to this forum and look for a frame. My bad.

There is a marketplace oriented subforum:

Forum: Single Speed and Fixed Gear Marketplace
Your Single Speed, Fixed and Track Bike Exchange. Requires upgraded membership (Titanium or Red Star)

I don't think anybody, including Scrod, has a hard time to see what you were attempting to do.

You have a point-system oriented program that you participate in, alongside Scrod and other retailers. You gain points (cash) by utilizing your "card" versus his "card." You were asking him to do business but allow you to save money and utilize your "card" to benefit from the other side of your purchase.

The system, points and program are all irrelevant. I'm sure that a simple call to UPS would get me the information needed to explain those details more than mere algebraic terms. Why bother?

Even if you simply were trying to save a buck, this is on par with me going to Burger King, ordering my Whopper and asking them to use the loaf of bread I brought instead of the bun and "could you put this Jimmy's DeadCow Shack" wrapper on it -

Basically, it's like showing up at a restaurant with your own steak, asking them to cook it for you and charge you less than their menu price because you get a better deal on meat than they do.

Ridiculous, no?

Again, I have full understanding of what you wanted to do. You're just pointing fingers at me because I think it's stupid.

Read again:

and

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This thread is hilarious.

Some of the most absurd questions get asked on this forum, and my mind goes dumb for a second.

A lot of fancy places will let you bring in your own bottles of wine. They also regularly charge you a corking fee of $30-$50 bucks per bottle, which is usually more expensive than their house wine.

Let him use his own UPS. Charge him double on the parts.