About Us

To better serve our customers,  are moving to a "mall" concept, with a number of specialty webstores focused on specific product areas.  The stores share offices, warehouse and shipping facilities located in Plainfield Illinois (about 35 miles west of Chicago). 

We keep inventory.  We are not another dot.com vapor store, taking orders in somebody's basement and passing them on to a drop shipper.  If you buy from a web store that just forwards orders to distributors for drop shipment (that's how most stores on the Internet work), delivery can be delayed if the stores distributor is out of stock.  The only way we can be sure we can fill your order promptly is to keep inventory.  We carry a lot of inventory on La Crosse Technology products.  Keeping inventory costs us money, but it allows us to deliver reliably.  Currently over 95% of orders received before 3 PM CST ship the same  business day. 

Shipping methods. We currently ship UPS, insured, with tracking numbers, or Priority Mail, insured without tracking numbers. We prefer UPS for two reasons.  Their tracking system is excellent.  You can see the progress of your package from our door to yours.  When they lose or damage a package (rarely), they resolve the issue quickly.  With Priority Mail, the best we can get is delivery confirmation, which only tells us when the package arrives.  Delivery conformation tells us nothing if the package hasn't arrived.  Although Priority Mail is typically delivered in 2 or 3 days, it isn't considered lost for at least 30 days.  It takes seemingly forever to get reimbursement for a lost package.  We do offer Priority Mail shipping to military APO and FPO addresses.

Shipping costs.  We try to keep the costs down as much as possible.  Our shipping cost is calculated and reported to you before you finalize the order.  Calculation is based on the total weight of your order, and usually, depending on the service, the distance from our warehouse to your address.  The total shipping charge added to your order should be roughly the UPS or Priority Mail charge, the cost of packing materials (the box, padding materials and labels cost around $1.50), and a few minutes of labor expense for the packer.  We do not try to hide the labor and materials charge in the purchase price, as that results in a significant overcharge when more than one item is ordered.    

Corrections. Please note that all orders will be reviewed for correctness. Due to all the possibilities for errors in processing and hacks from outside sources, prices and shipping charges will be reviewed for accuracy and corrected (after emailing you) when necessary. The two most common problems that show up are UPS servers allowing impossible shipping choices, and customers entering "Customer Pickup" as a shipping option when they live 1000 miles away.  Believe it or not, the UPS shipping servers, which our order process gets shipping rates from, will allow you to request having a truck drive your package from Chicago to Hawaii.  The system isn't perfect.

To Contact Us:

Please note that we are an Internet store, not a conventional phone order company.  We watch our Email obsessively.  In order to keep our prices down, we don't have a bunch of people answering the phone.  Feel free to give us a ring at the office number below, but during busy times, it may be busy.  By far the most efficient way to reach us is through Email.   

Payment Information:

Partshelf.com accepts Visa, Mastercard and American Express for web purchases.  We can offer a 2% cash discount if you prefer to mail a money order.  Email us for details.   

Customer Pickup:

If you are local and would like to pick up your order, we can arrange a time for you to pick up your order at the warehouse in Plainfield.  We are not a retail location.  We are not typically there after 6 PM or on weekends and we have no showroom or cash register.  Orders must be placed in advance.  Please Email us for additional information.