Online PEX wholesalers

Josh M.

HMM, I wonder though... An advantage to a contractor?

Josh M.

Online PEX wholesalers

Has anyone used an online PEX distributer? I am interested in anyones opinion on the matter. Has anyone got a story good or bad? Can you save any money? Moral dilemma's?

Al Letellier_9

online pex

haven't purchased any myself, but have had people call asking if we would install it and invariably have discovered that they bought oversized tubing.....these suppliers that I've encountered just care about selling the stuff, and have very little or no knowledge of proper sizing, etc.

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Bob Forand

Regardless...

There is another way of looking at this. If you support online wholesalers, it is one more nail in the coffin for the traditional local suppliers....I have run into a company who should be ashamed of itself for selling tubing to homeowners. This particular company uses 7/8" pex that when you bend it back and forth it gets a hole in it. The coupling is a steel barbed coupling that uses hose clamps to tighten them, the same company bases it's pump sizing on a three speed pump. When they give you a heat design they tell you what the pump speed should be set for...This is one area I firmly believ you get what you pay for...

S Ebels

This always baffles me

Here you have a customer who's going to install, or have someone install a heating system that has a LOT of variables to consider. Usually it's going to be imbedded in a cementeous material, or tucked away in a ceiling, floor or wall cavity, hopefully never to see the light of day again. At the very least, re-accessing the pex will entail a bunch of work and at worst, partial destruction of one's property.
These customers will search to the ends of the earth trying to save the last 1/10th of a cent on their pex tubing. They rarely give a thought to quality of the product, after sale support, or even correct sizing in the first place. Pex is pex, right?

To me, and forgive me for being blunt, but buying pex based on price alone is just plain stupid. Think about it. Let's say you need 5,000 feet of pex and you can save a dime a foot buying it from the internet place. That's $500.00 savings. If 500 bucks is the difference in whether you do it or not, maybe you better hold off. You're not ready for the investment in the first place. 500 bucks is 500 bucks you say? Let me tell you something.......500 bucks isn't going to mean squat when it's buried in your house somewhere, and it doesn't work because it's the wrong size, or the tube failed, or it wasn't right in one of another multitude of ways. It flat out doesn't make any sense.......at all!

Penny wise and Dollar foolish never did anyone any favors.

Terry Larsell

I buy all my pex online, I get it in a couple days and it cost way less even with the shipping. I'm buying most everything else also. I just use one online supplier and they treat me like they like my business and appreciate my input. My local suppliers have had plenty of chances to compete but they don't seem to care or want my business.
There is a local heating and air supplier that is very responsive but they aren't competitive or knowledgable when it come to radiant, I do buy my gas piping though them.

Not all online dealers are snake oil salesmen, I've had good results.

Terry

Wayco Wayne_2

I had

a DIY customer who I offered to sell pipe and manifold to at a modest mark up of 15%. He was able to get my supply house price, shipping included, minus the state sales tax. A savings to him of 20% over my price. It was Wirsbo brand to boot. I considered using the site myself but have a loyalty to my supply house. They take good care of me. WW

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S Ebels

In a situation like that..............

The "blame", if any, falls squarely on Wirsbo if you ask me. They take good care of their contractors but obviously are looking to push as much product out the door as they can, regardless of who it goes to or how it's used. This is assuming of course that the online guy is not a bonafide Wirsbo distributor in the first place. Who knows, maybe it's just a sharp distributor that's alittle ahead of the curve Wayco. It just proves a point that I have stated here before, and that is, "all we contractors really have to sell is our skill and knowledge".

Unknown

I myself have contractor clients in two states that came to me recently because their local supply houses don't know squat about radiant, and take three days to get back to them.

One of them was having a viessmann boiler in put into his own house. He was a commercial controls contractor, not a P and H guy, but still, he was in the trades. Went to a local supply house and was flat out told if he wasn't buying the boiler through them, they weren't interested in his project.

Now I have two contractor clients referring us left and right because I respond to their calls and emails the same day they call me, and I can have product on their doorsteps before their local supply house can, from halfway up the eastern seaboard.

It's all about service, sometimes at least, and value. If the local supply house does not establish value, it will not keep the business much longer. And value is more than a load calc and a cookie-cutter system for every project.

That said, I know the major suppliers have their work cut out for them. But I don't think it's possible to cater to every aspect of HVAC from one house and expect to be good at any of it. Most of them know air and know it well, and know hydronic enough to sell boilers and get heat into the rooms, but not much else.

There are exceptions. But this is a story I hear again, and again, and again.

Josh M.

Interesting perspectives guys.. I really appreciate all of your input. I think that it really comes down to relationships. Persoanally I refuse to let a wholesaler design my project so that really has no bearing in my decision. My local wholesaler gives referals to the big guy in town who heats with hot water tanks instead of boilers so I am not loyal to them. I will however pay an additional $500 on a $30,000.00 project to the local heating parts guy who has no problem spending an hour on the phone tracking something down for me, but he doesn't sell PEX. If I am going to have to buy from a big nasty corporation why not buy from someone who gives good customer service and comes in cheaper?

Vic D.

How do they handle returns?

Okay, these online "guys" offer the product at a discount, but how do they handle returns, damaged product, unused material at a jobsite, warranty issues? It would seem that the local wholesaler would be able to, and should be able to handle these issues much more conveniently for the contractor than the online places. Or do those who are using the online wholesaler expect the local wholesaler to warranty the product and take back returns for them? Just these items alone seem to me to make it worth purchasing from the local supplier. What's your opinion?

coreys

I generally get better selection and service from online vendors. Expertise too. Physical location has no relationship to these factors.

If you know exactly what you want, the product is simply a commodity. Advantage global marketplace.

If you need expertise, knowledge is the product (not a commodity), but the guy with the knowledge you need can just as easily be on the other side of the country, or around the globe. Knowledge, like all information, is placeless. In fact, local knowledge becomes less probable as the problem becomes more complex (or obscure). Much of what is going on in hydronics can be pretty cutting edge, and in most of the country hydronics itself is both rare and obscure.
Advantage global marketplace.

Just as this board is a global exchange of information and ideas...