Um, Let me jump in here please, and tell you what happened around here. The RR spending on electrical equipment varies from year to year depending on what projects are in the pipe, but anywhere from 2500 to 15000 in a years time.
I used a supply house based in another city. The local was reasonably well stocked, which is what I like because a lot of my projects are "engineered on the fly" because I build them around what I can find. Across the street from the supply house was the electronics house, from which I bought everything from solder to semiconductors. Counter help was courteous and knowledgable in both places.
First thing to happen, electrical house bought the electronics house. Pretty soon the electronics house was in the electrical house, squeezing space so electrical supply space got reduced. But the same people still were behind the counter.
Second, the electronics people got moved to HQ, a state away. So now you ordered by phone, or got the electrical people to try and tell you what still existed on the electronic shelves.
Third, the company hired some college kid to run the inventory from the home office. Now the counter help are grumbling about "there's six on the shelf but the computer says I don't have any so I can't sell you one." Or vice versa. But if you ordered by phone it would come out of the inventory "that wasn't in the computer"
Forth, the supply house sold the whole shebang to an offshore company. Now there's nothing on the shelf, with counter help running to other places of employment, and customers having to order everything out of the next big city, the local house is now merely a transfer station with maybe one box of outlets and the like on the shelves.
I moved my business to another local owned place, and they sold out and now it's pretty much useless too.
I am now travelling almost 45 minutes one way to shop at a local owned place, because they have stuff in stock and people who know how it works and what they have.
I realize this is overly long, but it gets frustrating when the places you can get what you need don't have it.
TW
