[sdiy] ethics of suppliers/rant

[Metrophage]

I have never been burned by anybody on SDIY. I bought PCBs from Gene
Stopp and Eric Barbour which arrived in good time. I have bought
tempcos from Jay and PCBs from Tom Gamble which I have waited a few
months for. Once I was burned on eBay by a person who had been
reliable... but then they died or disappeared or something - but that's
another story. 

Now that I have been on both sides of the buying/selling stuff on SDIY
thing I have a better understanding. To be really professional, I'd
need to have my own money ready, quietly buy parts or have PCBs made,
and - once they've arrived - tell everybody, collect money, and send
them. Then the transaction is quick and easy. The only problem is that
some of us (me!) don't have real (or any...) jobs, so getting
everything done ahead of time is not always possible for financial
reasons. Also, it is hard to evaluate the interest in whatever item
until you ask the list. If I had all of the cash myself to buy the
tempcos I ordered in the first place everything would have been much
simpler, instead my logistics had to factor getting payments from about
55 people. Imagine buying a hundred op-amps from yourfavesupplier.com,
and they had to wait to collect payments from other people who ordered
the same part you did! As soon as I had to do things this way, 95% of
the the timing issues left my control, which has caused me a bit of
anxiety. Best I can do is post when there are new developments, and try
to stay in touch.

On the flip side, I used to camp out at my mailbox every day for months
and go completely crazy looking for my EFM PCBs. It'd take Tom a week
or two to answer my crazed email and in the meanwhile wonder if he was
just stringing me along. Basically, I was just really impatient. But
then the boards arrived, I calmed down, and had a lot of fun with them.
Now I bang my head on my desk about how damn slow the tempco group buy
is, and I remember my noob self going crazy. That's the source of my
anxiety, because I remember exactly how maddening it was, and I don't
want other people to feel that I am being a creep and hording their
money/tempcos. "Business" takes trust, but everything has gotten so
much faster in the world, that it seems like people's sometimes
evaporates before a longer transaction finishes.

Still, good/bad trader info could be helpful to post, provided that
people can go into some detail without making it too personal. It seems
cool how AH does this, but I'd not want such posts to take over the
list. Probably woudn't since we aren't all buying/selling gear on SDIY
every day.

CJ

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com