[Elecraft] OT: IDIOM PRESS

[Fred Smith]

Which goes to show, people still find his products to be some of the best
and willing to wait. I guess if you want a lesser product go elsewhere or
wait like we did on our Elecraft gear abet a much larger company.

73,
Fred/N0AZZ

-----Original Message-----
From: elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net
[mailto:elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of David Gilbert
Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2012 10:55 PM
To: elecraft at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] OT: IDIOM PRESS


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

______________________________________________________________
Elecraft mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post: mailto:Elecraft at mailman.qth.net

This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html