ORIGINAL: Aerobirdbrain
P.S. to all.: These are the main reasons why LHS don't stock the right stuff or just don't plain have it. A: LHS owners/employees aren't psychic; you have to tell them what you want or at least give them hints as to what you think they should stock. B: We are at the mercy of the distributers. If they don't have it we certianly won't have it and will continue to not have it until the dist. decides to send it out. Also, some dist. don't even carry some products; just ask any LHS that orders through HRP or Horizon how hard it is to get a hold of Novarossi parts or even RB stuff. The reason is because those manufacturers choose to sell thier products exclusivly to on-line shops; which is why you can find Novarossi and RB stuff so readily on on-line shops, but so scarce in most LHS everywhere.
So when you use "we", does that mean you run or own a LHS? What is your policy? Hire someone who would rather lie about not knowing something in an attempt to make a sale or hire someone who actually knows something about radio control and admit they don't have something in stock? Do you refer people to another LHS that actually carries the stock or simply try to sell the consumer something else that he does want? Heck, I’ve even been in LHS that didn’t realize Hobbico even had a warehouse in this state and couldn’t figure out why they couldn’t get a product. That particular distributor issue had nothing to do with the actual distributor other than the fact that perhaps the person on the other end wasn’t checking both warehouses, yet an individual could simply check by visiting Tower’s website. One particular time I was looking for an AM Conversion Module for a Futaba T3PK—one franchise store tried to sell me the radio because they couldn’t find the module and then they would only get it from another franchise store out-of-state. Again, that had nothing to do with the distributor but that stores lack of management and knowledge. It simply appears to me that some LHS don’t want to carry the stock since they don’t want to carry the inventory and if they don’t have the inventory, they’ll try to sell whatever they have in stock whether the consumer asks for it or not.