I ain't bugged Ray Lol.
Let me tell you how frustrating this is from our perspective... First, it's nice to work with someone and figure-out what they need. Believe it or not, I've managed to reduce what people expected to buy in all my sales so far. Once I find-out what kind of work they really do, I suggest the most appropriate tools and in many cases, simpler and easier ways to do the work. I never "up-sell" or play any mind-games and after a couple hours on the phone or emails, you get a good feel for what will make that person happy. Then, it turns-out they need a machine that's not in stock. -Bummer. In addition, many folks get pretty annoyed about the delay. I understand and wish there was something we could do to speed it up. When a shipment comes in, all hell breaks loose at Matt's place. He hires a couple more helpers (the same guys all the time) and they work 12 hours/day and weekends to get the machines out.
All of this would be avoided if the factories could deliver product at the intervals they say they will -but it doesn't often happen. Matt has to buy machines on an annual contract basis, agreeing to purchase say 100 model-1 units, 250 model-2 units, 500 model-3 units etc... The factories say they will deliver them in equal numbers 4 times a year. Nope, we might get half the supply in one shipment instead of evenly spaced-out. Sometimes they don't supply the year's quota and roll it over to the next year. Can you say "warehouse issues"? This makes life really tough for both you guys and us. Matt's been doing this now for 15 years and this is par for the course.
-And once again, the problem is not limited to just us. All of the upper tier machine vendors are the same way. Machine shops call us and say that no vendors have a 1440 lathe so they call us to see if we have anything in stock and they'll grab it -even though it's not the one they really want. We don't gouge, we just sell it at the advertised price.
Your guess is as good as mine as to why the delays from the factories are so frequent. We don't get that level of information from them when it comes to bad news. Matt is an authorize Gator dealer, Hitachi dealer, Sharp dealer, and several others. He does that so he stands a better chance of getting product to sell. And BTW, our Gator prices are the lowest in town and we have most common things in stock or can get it in 48 hours. -And speaking of that, he needs to send me the inventory list...
Ray