You may recall the guy who was on here shilling for Online Metals a while back. I figured what the heck. I'll give them a chance to quote a decent size (for me) order. Around 600ish lbs of aluminum and a piece of stainless. They were more than $1100 higher than Coast. Before freight they were over $600 higher. Coast drops an order that size for free on their truck so they have an edge there. ($50 drop charge for smaller orders)
Well, that's no big deal I guess. The guy did say maybe on larger orders, but for onesy twosy Online was only going to be a little different. No. I priced off their website a couple weeks ago for a couple fill-in pieces Coast was out of stock on and they were quite a bit higher than Xometry where I bought them. The funny part? I seem to recall the packaging seems to indicate those pieces drop shipped or were sourced from Online Metals. They obviously could be competitive if they wanted to.
Midwest was actually cheaper than anybody for the base price, (by a couple hundred dollars) but shipping costs made them more than Coast by a couple hundred. That was with just straight off their website pricing. Not a quote request. I did drop them a quote request to see if that makes any difference. I probably won't buy from them anyway though since their order fulfillment time is pretty terrible. Actually their terrible fulfillment time is why I contacted Coast in the first place.
Now I won't say I won't ever do business with Online Metals (I think I bought some brass from them a few years ago), but you can't tell people things that just aren't true when you are shilling. Certainly not people who are going to check. The guy came off as an asshole, but that's not a deal breaker for me. I'm an asshole. The deal breaker is they aren't competitive for small quantity and they aren't competitive for modest quantity. I can't speak to truck loads. I can never do enough work to justify buying a truckload. Besides at truckload quantity even ALRO starts to get competitive.