I noticed a few changes at Zoro over the last 6-12 months. The first thing I noticed is that some of their items are going up in price by 5-10% every couple months, often right before Zoro has a 10-20% off sale. As a result, their "sales" on some items don't save customers nearly as much as many think. However, the recent price increases mostly seem to be brand based, not category based or "across the board" type price increases, so I don't think they are Zoro initiated price increases. Zoro's prices for many other items have been the same for years now.
I think it's the manufacturers raising the wholesale prices on Zoro causing your issues. Most likely, Williams raised their base prices and canceled all existing unfulfilled drop ship orders (that were for the previous lower price) in order to prevent Williams from losing money. Now Zoro has to raise their prices for in stock and drop shipped items from Williams going forward, because Williams is the one that increased their prices, not Zoro.
I noticed that Zoro now also has quite a few double listings as well. Double listings as in, two listings for the exact same item on their site. In all the cases I noticed, one listing was for an "in stock" item at price "X". The other listing was for the identical item "drop shipped" from the manufacturer. The drop shipped item was usually always priced 5-20% higher. It appears that Zoro is trying their best to keep things in stock right now, but they are having a hard time accomplishing that goal due to supply shortages, so they switched to a double listing setup for some items so they can hopefully still get the sale to go through as a drop ship even if they are having a hard time sourcing a large order from that same supplier to stock their own warehouses.
Don't fault Zoro for this issue, it is affecting most the suppliers I use right now, not just them. Some manufacturers are canceling all outstanding orders whenever they raise prices, others are honoring the original prices. Some manufacturers are not giving any delivery estimates so orders for their products are just stuck in perpetual limbo, and others are eventually being delivered. It all depends on how the manufacturer chooses to operate their business. Zoro is a middle man, so they only have so much control over the process. Zoro is also Grainger, even though they pretend they aren't related. Notice how all Zoro listings show the same item part number shown on Grainger's site for the same item. If Zoro is having an issue, so is Grainger and Grainger is one of the largest distributors in the US. This isn't just a Zoro problem. We all just have to be more patient right now, and the price increases are inflation at work.
If it helps, I just received a rather large order from a different website, similar to Zoro. The entire order included less common items, all drop shipped directly from Bondhus. It took about a month for the first box to arrive, and two months for the entire order to be fulfilled. The order arrived in three separate boxes, a couple weeks apart from each other. That tells me Bondhus is making their tools and getting them out as fast as they have them available to ship, but things in general are just not back to normal at this time. It was quite a wait, but I feel blessed to have the tools now. Things can always be worse. If you think tools are bad right now, try ordering some car parts. Very hit or miss in terms of availability.
If you can, try to only order "in stock" items. Even one drop shipped or backordered item in an order can throw a wrench in things if you don't have plenty of time to wait for your online order to arrive. Even smaller websites like KC Tools are showing lots of backordered items. Last time I was on their site they weren't even allowing backorders for Wiha tools, because the re-stock delivery estimates from Wiha were too far out.
