With all due respect, I fundamentally disagree with a lot of the comments on this board, all you find on these forums is an apology tour for distributors, and it's what plagues a lot of these topic posts tbh.

Now, first, I have good experience with this distributor. They and several others are great to talk to, but you must call or email to do business. Most of these sites are bad.

However, when people post a concern like this, they get railed on, or told it's not the distributors fault. "Oh Jim,Mike,Bob,Sally, etc is great". I get that these are good people, but it doesn't make them immune to customer service gaps. In the real world every "type" of customer matters, and it's becoming increasingly clear that some pinheads are demanding a better e-commerce experience.

I would further argue the "Stern delays" excuse, as while that is true, it only takes one quick look at this distributors website to see that "ships in 4-6 weeks" is a copy/paste job everywhere. No way Stern is shipping him is entire inventory in 4-6 weeks. So there is some accountability here with distributors not truly understanding when thier manufacturer will provide them product - and misleading consumers to place a vaporware order.

I would further say its part thier responsibility to start holding Stern to account if that's impacting thier customers satisfaction.

However, none of this will happen if we keep apologizing for them and Stern. It's not negative or personal, it's just business.

Agreed 100%. I was simply replying to the apologist that have come through and will com through this post. Everyone expects people to just shrug stuff off, but that's not fair to the OP.