ORIGINAL: Ron Stahl
I tried to have my office assistant buy me a carbon fiber tube for a project at work this past week and the TBM phone staff wanted her to copy her drivers license and the credit card front and back and fax them copies of them before they would fill the order since she had never bought anything from them prior. Very unusual and we have never had that request before from anyone we do business with; we have had people ask for the security code on the back of the card. This is the second time we tried to buy something from TBM for my lab without getting the order filled and the last time was when a very famous modeler was working for me two summers ago and we needed some extra SWB aluminum servo arms that he had used on our project. He called them and asked the folks at TBM to ship them to us and bill his account and they refused so we went elsewhere for them. Looks like they may have gotten burned buy some CC sales that went bad. I don't jump through special hoops to spend my or my compaines money so we just bought the tubes from TNT landing gear instead for $11 more than TBM since they had no special hoops for us to jump through.
We actually have the same policy for certain orders. If you have zero history with us, especially outside the USA, and are purchasing a big ticket item we will ask for a copy of your ID and CC to assure us this is a valid purchase. This is not only to protect us, it protects the cardholder from fraud. We too have been burned and if an order, for any reason, raises a red flag for us; we will request adequate proof the order is valid. Customers with purchase history from us will never run into these issues...