October 2019 by Matt C.
After trying to be a Fastenal customer for the last couple years, I am done trying after my most recent experience. For the 4th time this year, Fastenal had me drive all the way across town to pick up an order I had placed (and expected to be there, either from phone call conversations, email confirmations, or website status on an order) only to find that my products were not there. The wasted gas, mileage, and time, if I were to invoice it back to Fastenal, would easily be triple the entire sum I have spent as a customer at Fastenal over my whole life! This genuinely makes Fastenal a horrible value for customers. When a business will sell your pre-paid order before you arrive, and then tell you to come back tomorrow (another hour drive...), they clearly do not care about you as a customer. Multiple times I have left Fastenal muttering and cursing their bad systems and missing inventory, and I'm sick of it. There's just nothing to be gained in supporting a brick and mortar store if they are going to j*** you around and waste your time like this. I support local businesses in general, but Fastenal genuinely deserves to fail against e-commerce. They simply waste far too much of their customers' time with missed orders and bad systems!
