Payment and purchase orders

Paying by card

Every major card, at checkout, charged when the order is placed. We do not store card numbers - the payment runs through our processor and what comes back to us is a token and the last four digits.

If a card is declined we get told that and nothing else, so we cannot tell you why. That answer is with your bank, and it is usually a geography or a limit rather than anything to do with the order.

Buying on a purchase order

You need an account with terms before a PO can be accepted, and setting one up takes a day or two rather than a month. Ask, send us trade references and a tax certificate if you have one, and we will tell you the same week.

Standard terms

Net 30 from invoice date, once an account is open.

Your PO number

Put it in the order notes at checkout. It appears on the invoice, the packing slip and the statement, because a missing PO number is the single most common reason an invoice sits unpaid in somebody's queue.

Separate billing address

Set one at checkout. Parts go to the site and the invoice goes to whoever pays it, which is usually not the same building.

First order

May go out on a card or a prepayment while the account is being opened, so nothing waits on paperwork.

What an account does not change

The price. There is no trade tier here and no negotiated sheet that somebody else is on and you are not - what the site shows is what the invoice says, for everybody.

That is a deliberate position rather than an oversight. Discovering that the number you have been paying for two years is the one nobody else pays is a bad afternoon, and we would rather not be the ones who caused it. Volume gets discussed on a quote, in writing, where you can see it.

Late payment

We will email before anything escalates, and it will be a person rather than a dunning sequence. An invoice past thirty days puts new orders on hold until it clears; an invoice past sixty accrues 1.5% a month.

If something is going to be late, tell us early. A date we know about is an administrative matter. A date we find out about by it passing is how an account ends up on hold in the middle of a build.

Tax

Sales tax is calculated at checkout on the shipping address. If you are exempt, get the certificate on file before you order - a refund of tax already charged is possible but is genuinely more work for both of us than sending a PDF in advance.

Quotes

Valid for thirty days unless it says otherwise on the quote itself. Prices in this trade move with the manufacturers, and a quote we cannot honour is worse than one with a date on it.

• A quote can be turned into an order by replying to it. No re-keying.
• A PO raised against a quote number is matched automatically to that pricing.
• Where a price has moved and we can still hold the quote, we hold it.