Thread: Welding suppliers

I have found Welding Suppliers one of the strangest suppliers to deal with from a home user point of view and not overly helpful when needing quality advice, so it should be good to see some recommendations on here either local or on line and international. I didn't find my dealing with Aitken in Brisbane all that exciting when buying my last welder, but maybe I just got them on a bad day or week or two. Product knowlege seemed poor and I had to resort to the machine company rep to sort things out. That was a year or so ago.
They may see us as just a one off buyer with low usage of consumables and more of a PIA to them, that's how I felt anyway.

Yep i also get the same sort of treatment when goin into the LWS to genuionly buy items.

I just had a look at that Aitken website, those prices are through the roof, almost double the price on their Inverter machines, or is that now the Carbon tax price!!

Originally Posted by johncar

I have found Welding Suppliers one of the strangest suppliers to deal with from a home user point of view and not overly helpful when needing quality advice, so it should be good to see some recommendations on here either local or on line and international. I didn't find my dealing with Aitken in Brisbane all that exciting when buying my last welder, but maybe I just got them on a bad day or week or two. Product knowlege seemed poor and I had to resort to the machine company rep to sort things out. That was a year or so ago.
They may see us as just a one off buyer with low usage of consumables and more of a PIA to them, that's how I felt anyway.

Bad day, week or month, wouldn't have mattered at Aitken same service no matter what.
On the consumables side they can get pretty much anything you want if you tell them exactly what you want. There's the rub though.

Independent Welding Supplies has good prices and the service isn't too bad.

The secret to dealing with a lot of these suppliers is when the salesman gets a blank look on his face is to save your breath go home do all the work for him researching the product then come back and tell him exactly what you want.

John if you need quality consumables (apart from wire for postage cost reasons) I'd have a look at Cheltenham. Service is fantastic. Best though if you need a good size order filled to make post work for you.

Garry

Here's mine

- Mick

https://www.woodworkforums.com/f160/o...-happy-137875/

Originally Posted by WelderMick

Here's mine

- Mick

https://www.woodworkforums.com/f160/o...-happy-137875/

Yeah +1 with all those

Hi all - Graham here...

While looking at the website stats I saw a few 'click throughs' from this website and was curious who was putting links out on a wood working forum Not your average welders forum...

When I saw Garry's kind words I thought I would have to sign up and say thanks.

I am not here to sell anything but just thought I would give you all a bit more information.
We have been established since 1996 and recently (2008) moved 130miles to Cheltenham where we then also opened up a trade counter to serve end users (opened 2011). It has been a steep learning curve compared to where we usually just served large OEMs - the main difference is the language used for each part.

Garry was our first ever online customer so will always be a memorable one. He saw the very early version of our website which was a bit of a muddle, I am happy to say we are improving the website all the time. At least I think we are.

Regarding postage: we use interparcel.com for sending parcels out and can only give precise quotes when everything is packed up. For sending overseas it works on volume and weight so we try to keep the 'empty' space to a minimum.
We have previously sent some contact tips to Garry via Royal Mail which was surprisingly cheap ~£5 or £6 from memory.
MIG wire - yeah, postage of a 5kg reel = £46
However, if you are ordering higher value bits then it may well be worth it with the AUD seeming to get ever stronger against the GBP.

We are a small family company so you will either get through to Pam, Terry or myself if you call, or myself if you email the generic address on the website.

Oh! And you don't need to know any football Just country names for when the Euros and World Cup are on. Personally I am more of a field hockey fan - I'm a goal keeper for the local team.

Just had a look at the Aitken website and I'm blowed if I can understand why anyone would use them. They are at least twice the price of what I pay locally for common items such as Al mig wire and SS tig filler wire - that's not counting freight either.
Obviously people aren't happy with their local welding suppliers and are choosing to shop online, even from overseas but I cannot honestly fault my local dealer, (Tasweld who carry Cigweld, WIA, Fronius, Bernard, Binzel, Tweco etc. etc. etc.).
Only two days ago I purchased some SS tig filler and the person I usually deal with was not there and the price quoted a little steep. All I did was say that that was high and they had better sharpen their pencil, voila, it was discounted to the same price that their high volume customers pay. Try doing that with an online retailer!
Loyalty means a lot with industrial suppliers and you may be surprised what you will get for your loyalty.
Just another point of view.

Just had a look at the Aitken site myself and am shocked that charge what they do. Never bought online from them and never will looking at those prices. I've only ever bought from the counter and found their prices were very competitive, particularly for wire and rods.

Garry

yeah I second Bob the Welder wrt online purchasing.

Karl, just because we are online doesn't mean you can't phone, email, text us etc and see if we can improve on our website prices. That's what Garry did with his Binzel 26FV TIG Torch and we could improve on the price for him. That's why us crazy Brits are in a double dip recession

I looked at the Aitken site today and the only reason I can see for them doing that is to make users feel like they are getting a good deal when they login and go "wow, look what I am saving!"

We just tend to go along the lines of 'what you see is what you get' big or small we try aim to be just plain good value and not the one price for one and one for the other. In our eyes its a bit dishonest - as you found when you popped in and got charged a different price from one person to the next, it seems to be what all the welding distributors do but we wanted to stand out.

Credit where credit is due though. Link to Tasweld as recommended by Karl Tasweld.

I order large quantities of mig,tig and plasma consumables from 6shop_river.
I have also bought a couple of torches from them also.
Their quality is great and the prices are unbeatable.
Matt

Originally Posted by matthew_g

I order large quantities of mig,tig and plasma consumables from 6shop_river.
I have also bought a couple of torches from them also.
Their quality is great and the prices are unbeatable.
Matt

Can't get any fresher from the factory than getting your goodies straight from China.

I have put in a vote for Bob the Welder. Bought a small order recently. There was a slight hiccup with the purchase process on the site. I got a message saying purchase not successful so I did it again and added another item I had forgotten. Got the same result. I emailed them and got a reply very quickly saying another customer had had the same issue and must be a problem with the web hosting. Anyway the problem was sorted out and I received the stuff in quick time. Mig tips for 50cents each. Great price.

Dean

for thorweldingsupplies. I have only ordered from them (mostly small batches of tig wire) and they have always sent out stuff quick and what I order turns up, can't ask for much more than that.