messick is a dealer.
most of the dealers I know of are being charged shipping by their suppliers (in this case kubota). What are the dealers gonna do? Eat the shipping costs? Our little network....over $1,000,000 in [parts] shipping costs were not accounted for in 2018. That's 12 dealers combined. One would say well that's just pocket change. Might be for you but that's a lot of money to me! Write off? No so fast. Not everything is deductible, depreciable, or otherwise able to be written off. The unresolved shipping costs are simply a loss. A loss is the same thing that happens when you order something online and get it wrong and there's no recourse. You suck it up and hope not to do it again.
They're going to pass it on to the consumer. That means if kubota charges them $7 to ship it from warehouse to dealer, dealer's gonna add that into the shipping cost to your door when you order it. On the same note, one of the things that has bothered me about online shopping (in a lot of cases) is when you are "shopping", it might show that item to be available, but after a few weeks of it not showing up, you find out that it backordered or is NLA or whatever. If it's not available local, it may not be available at all. BTW what is the part number? I might be able to get a dealer parts guy look it up & get some more info on it.
This is one of the many ways that the online shopping industry is under attack by small businesses, and there's good reason for it. Also many states are charging sales taxes for online orders even if the business doesn't have a physical address in that state. The government has been 'missing out' on their share too, for a long time.
Do I like it? NO WAY. But we have no choice. I feel like even after making contact with our government officials, they are going to do whatever they want anyway if it fits there agenda. To me then, what's the point?