This may sound harsh but it seems to me that any company (no matter how
small) that is unable to deliver products in a reasonable amount of time
and is unwilling to respond in a reasonable amount of time to emails or
phone calls does not deserve to be in business ... period. In my
opinion they have engaged in commerce under false pretenses. To imply
that customers should simply cut laggard companies some slack puts the
burden here on the wrong side of the transaction ... any company that is
unable to be responsive per commonly accepted criteria should state that
up front before they accept your order.
In the case of Idiom Press, a little searching on eHam.net and various
reflector archives clearly shows that they have roughly a ten year
history of behaving like this. It's the rule, not the occasional "bump".
Dave AB7E
On 12/5/2012 8:16 PM, Dyarnes wrote:
Hi All,
What a lot of folks don't realize is that a great many of the amateur
radio suppliers, and especially the QRP type suppliers, are "one man
operations"! As such, they don't have a particularly organized and
sophisticated ordering and shipping process. Accordingly, if you are
in a particular hurry, or need something quickly from one of these
very small companies, you should talk to them personally and make sure
you are going to receive your order in the timeframe you are
expecting. There are a thousand reasons why it might take longer than
you expect to fill your order. Most of these little companies are
operating out of their garages, or similarly small space, and parts
coming in versus things going out can be an issue. I'm not making
excuses for bad service, but so many of these operations are reliant
on their receiving the necessary parts, which they really can't
control. They can't afford to maintain large inventories of parts, so
a sudden rush of orders probably means a lag time that would normally
be considered unacceptable.
By all means, you should talk to the supplier personally and find out
if there is going to be a delay of any significance. Most of them
will tell you whether or not they have everything you want in stock.
Some of these folks are doing this "on the side", in addition to their
regular job, so don't be surprised if it takes a little time to fill
an order. It may involve a good bit of personal effort to make sure
what they send you is correct. It's entirely different from being a
full blown manufacturing operation where they have employees
specifically responsible for making sure that everything needed is on
the shelf and ready for shipment.
Some QRP suppliers, like Dave Benson and Steve Weber, are good
examples of this. Both of those guys usually "geared up" for a
production run of "X" number of kits. However, if more orders than
that came in, they typically had a hiatus of time in order to re-stock
the necessary parts. The NorCal kits were the same way. They could
handle the number of orders they announced, but if interest exceeded
that, well, it was probably going to be a wait of some time before
they could handle the orders received. I don't know that much about
Idiom press (they have been around for a long time), but I suspect
they are in the same category. I'm not sure what they sell is
sufficient to qualify for being a full blown manufacturing operation
with a staff sufficiently large to make sure everything necessary is
on the shelf and ready for shipment.
Bottom line, if you are in a big hurry, call them and talk to them
personally to find out what delay might be in the offing! I know,
some of these operations promise more than they can handle, but most
of them, I think, try to be reasonably forthright in their
advertising. In any event, if time is of the essence, I'd be
verifying things them personally.
Most of these small operations are incredibly innovative in what they
offer, so don't expect too much too soon! Even Elecraft started out
to be a somewhat laggard operation, but the quality of their offerings
soon made it possible for them to rise to "big company" reliability.
Not every QRP supplier will achieve that level of success, so you have
to be a little patient. Usually that will be greatly rewarded, but it
is a bit frustrating. If you can't stand to wait a bit, then maybe
you should be looking elsewhere.
I have no clue as to whether Idiom Press meets the criteria I describe
above, but I'd be almost willing to bet that it does. Over the years
I've seen dozens of companies like this with the same "lag time"
issue. On top of that, much of the delay can be because various
personal issues arose which complicated their ability to devote the
necessary attention to this "sideline" business. Hey! That's just
part of the mix! I will tell you , though, that rarely have I been
unhappy in the end. It's just that the timeframe has been
disappointing. Your expectations are not unreasonable, but the basic
fact of life is that you should verify the validity of your
expectations when dealing with any small company. There is just too
much that can interfere with achieving a satisfactory result when you
are patronizing small suppliers. Too many things can go wrong for
them to not hit a bump here or there. Just think about it!
Dave W7AQK
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