John Bartley wrote:
Joe Bento wrote:

It wasn't all too many years ago that three to six weeks minimal
delivery time from order placement was normal to receive an order.
Now we expect some small company that caters exclusively to an obscure
crowd of vacuum tube enthusiests to have the order postmarked nearly
as soon as we hit the submit button.

I'd like to continue my "bad vendor" rant.
In this one particular case the vendor hit me (after filling in the
'shopping cart' and placing the order) with a disculpatory page about
how they were behind in filling orders and x amount of line items might
take x amount of days. In addition to the attitude they also stated to
not bother calling them about delays since it was all explained on this
page and it took them 5-7 days anyway to respond to emails so don't
bother inquiring via that method.
Well, ok. I was warned...AFTER placing the order.
They went on to explain how hard it is to get good people and a bunch of
other fluff but left the impression that 7-10 days for an 8-line order
was achievable.
That was over a month ago and that page is now gone.

My initial post solicited some comments about being respectful for the
'home-based' small business guys who don't sell on the internet as a
full-time venture. I have re-ordered all the necessary things from such
"one-man" vendors and every one of them replied to my emails in a matter
of hours and the parts are now here sitting by the keyboard within 2-4 days.

Permit me to put a name to the ogre, Ocean State Electronics, or
OSElectronics. This isn't my first bout with them - a year or two ago
they simply cancelled my order without notification since 'most' of the
items weren't in stock. It took 30 days and a phone call to get them to
admit that.

In this instance I called on the phone and got shuffled between
800-number order takers and toll charge complaint people and they told
me my order was to be shipped "tomorrow". I have already received other
items ordered within days thereafter from other vendors. I'm sure their
items will eventually arrive but I'm at 5 weeks already and THAT is not
acceptable when they tell me they'd LIKE to ship items within 24-48
hours and some phone-droid gives me the 'tomorrow' schpiel. There's an
FAQ on their website that keeps explaining away their culpability but
the bottom line is they are a crappy outfit to deal with.

I'll always praise the good guys and that includes most internet
vendors. Ocean State Electronics and Hosfelt are the only two on my
brown list. Many people have had success with these vendors so they
must not be all bad but I'd like to make it be known that these two can
be very problematic.

-Bill M