"Ron Natalie" wrote in message
m...

How so, I didn't purchase the unit from JPI, I purchased it from Spruce.

They never indicated that they didn't stock them and were drop-shipping
them from JPI. They never told me in the intervening three weeks when
the shipping date might me. I was totally in the dark.

Just absolutely typical of my dealings with Spruce. Can't ever count on
them.
Wouldn't use them for anything time critical.

A while back I wrote a long article in Aero-News about Microair's production
and sales issues, and the fact that there were a lot of distributors and
dealers ****ed off about the issue, having to deal with angry customers and
having to return money. I interviewed some half-dozen avionics resellers,
including AS&S, and they were all uniformly ****ed at the manufacturer. The
distributor, EDMO, had at the time an order backlog going back almost a
year.

It's somewhat naive to expect that AS&S is responsible for this because they
don't "stock" the unit. Very few companies in this industry (or in any
industry) stock items in their own warehouse when the items don't move
quickly. That would be a waste of funds tied up in inventory for no reason,
and in this economy, it would be irresponsible to do that. In the
foodservice business, for example, inventory management is even more
critical due to the perishable nature of the goods.

What the dealer does is take the manufacturer at their word that they are
going to ship (drop- or direct) when an order is sent, and sell the items
based on the statements of the manufacturer. There are huge warehousing and
inventory management operations in the US who do this for a living. For
example, UPS has inventory management services where they set up systems to
very quickly fulfill orders.

Customers are not normally told this because most customers don't care where
the unit comes from. In this, as in Microair's case, the fault lies not with
the dealer who took the manufacturer's word, but with the manufacturer.

As to notification, I don't know if you told AS&S to notify you of back
orders. There's an option on the web site ordering system to tell them
whether or not you want your order shipped partially or only shipped when
complete. The status of my orders are usually available on the website. If I
remember correctly, the status even says when the order has been picked from
the warehouse, shipped, etc.

Like I said, if you're not or never have been in business for yourself, most
people don't have a clue when it comes to issues like these.

Juan