Valor Talk

I was reading the old forums not too long ago, I noticed that Valor was to start shipping items on the same day if the orders were sent in before a specified time.

I've only been ordering from Valor for less than a year and find the shipping times are 2-3 days or even longer. In this day and age customers want their items delivered within a week.

I really feel these shipping time are unacceptable. Orders placed should be sent out by the next business day the latest. Don't get me wrong, I'm greatful that I found Valor, but we do take alot of flack from customers.

Is there going to be any chance of faster shipping times as stated in the old forums?

This is something we have been working on for over a year now.  We have replaced bascially the whole staff accept a couple of people.  There are a couple of problems that just aren't easy to overcome.  One is we ship a lot of air orders.  Those were are first priority to get out the same day and we have accomplished that.  The other problem we have not been able to overcome yet is the volume of orders at the beginning of the week.  A good chunk of our orders come in on Monday and Sunday night.  We are constantly playing catch up for Monday.

We have been addressing it all year and we have made some final personel changes out there this week, but as luck would have it, the new person in charge ended up in the hospital last night, so I guess if it's not one thing, it's another.

All I can say is I don't like it anymore than you and I do plan to have it complete soon.

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Ben Newton

I would say that the valor shipping time has greatly improved today vs 5-6 months ago.  Today most orders seem to go out within 2-3 days and I notice lately that some orders may even be going out the next day.

 

Most of my customers that I ship items from valor to actually are happy with the shipping time.  I don't really get many complaints.   I build my website to say that most orders will ship within 1 to 3 days of payment and in most cases this can happen.

As Ben noted, this has been on ongoing problem and despite all their best efforts, they have been unable to resolve it. Our solution has been to reduce the number of drop ships by keeping more items in stock. We also have a policy of not drop shipping anything under 20 dollars unless it is an absolute necessity. If we don't have it in stock, we immediately contact the customer to inform them of a delay in shipping. All this not only helps us by allowing us to get our orders shipped quickly (which develops customer loyalty), but helps in a very small way to reduce Valor's shipping load. Keeping our top selling items and small dollar items in stock has gone a long way to allowing us to ship most of our orders out within one business day.

While I would love to have same day or next day shipping from Valor, in the end our customers are looking at us, not Valor, to provide them with prompt shipping. We have come up with some partial solutions that have worked for us. I recommend that rather than counting on Valor alone to correct a situation that has been ongoing for a very long time that everyone look for ways to help themselves.

 At the very least, I would recommend posting the fact that orders will take two to three days to ship. Honesty is generally the best policy.

 

 

 

 

I always tell customers to stock the items they sell well.  If you are not willing to stock some items and ship them yourself, then ask yourself if you really want to be in this business.

We really have not had any complaints about the shipping times lately.  Most of our customers have learned to work with our times with no problems.

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Ben Newton

I wanted to respond in general to some of the replies. Our business does stock thousands of items and we ship everyday same day whenever possible. We just came accross Valor this year and were pleased with the amount of products they have. To try to take on more stock...such as zippos and whatever would be impossible.

I was only stating that what I read in the old forums was that Valor was working on same day shipping. Where we sell our products... being late even 1 day is unacceptable.

I understand fully that droppshipping is really not a good thing...it drives prices down so low, there is almost no profit, since everyone and their brother is trying to make a buck off the same product.

Most of our bussiness is from companies that WILL NOT dropship and have minimum advertised pricing. If more companies would at the very least have MAP we could all make a reasonable profit...

Hi,

I deal with 8 different drop-ship vendors and Valor is the best.  I have one vendor who is a little faster to get items 'out the door', but their error rate is a little too high.  Valor has never shipped the wrong SKU on any of my orders.

Also, the same day shipping for air shipments has always been excellent.

Al
 

While it may have seemed otherwise, I wasn't really directing my comments at any single individual. As was noted, this is an old topic that has its beginnings in the old forum. I have certainly done my share of complaining about shipping times, but it seems to me that at this point they are what they are and no amount of complaining is going to get orders out the door any faster. The shipping delays should also not come as a surprise as the order form clearly states a two business day shipping schedule.

For my money, Valor is at the top of the heap as far as our suppliers go. Ben's comments regarding dealers simply learning to deal with the shipping times are spot on. So, my advice is to learn to live with the shipping times for now. Work around them in whatever way works and be thankful that moderately slow shipping is the only regular problem most of us have to contend with when dealing with Valor. Dealers who use Valor exclusively and don't have experience with other suppliers may not realize how lucky they are to have found Valor.

 

I always forget that it states the shipping time right there in the checkout...  Thanks for reminding everyone.

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Ben Newton