I enquired once about a large scale tank from BYA which was obviously thousands of dollars we are talking about and it took 3 weeks to get a reply. After that there was no way in the world I was going to order anything from them let alone something so expensive.
Generally i try to communicate with companies before I make a purchase especially if there's a fair bit of money involved, but even then there's no guarantees that you will get the same service once you have the item.