Reply to "Vendor Tales"

No doubt being a vendor is a tough business. I try to do as much research from their websites as possible and on the forum before I go calling them up taking up their time. The only thing I can advise to some of the vendors is to have the closest and most thorough inventory of your parts online. Some of the websites are better than others, and I don't mean by flashy, I mean by search ability. Anyone who has been a business major in the last 10 years can tell you that a business' website is not supposed to be flashy where people get lost. The website needs to be simple and easy to navigate directing customers to what they need as fast as possible with the fewest clicks. That doesn't imply you need to throw everything on one page, it means to make it navigable. Some of the diagrams from the factory showing the parts on the websites are such low resolution, I can bearily identify the correct parts sometimes.

I also agree that you need to be clear about whether you want a NOS, repro, used part etc. There are a lot of parts flying around out there.