Re: [ATM] ATM Suppliers, etc..

["Bob May" <bobmay@nethere.com>]

The problem with Newport is that the glass business to amateurs
is a very minor part of their business.  Being amateurs, most of
us really don't know what were are asking for so we ask a lot of
questions.  This eats up time on the phone and so forth which
needs to be paid for with the business done.  A piece of pyrex
12.5": in diameter only gets a few bucks to them and it ends up
costing them to do the special order.  They're more in tune with
handling an order for a whole lot of glass on a regular basis
with a regular customer.  The amateurs aren't in the customer
database so all that data also needs to be added to the database
and then they have to work around the amateur when they do their
advertising stuff with the pros.  Simply put, the amateur stuff
that they do is a pain in the butt.
A case in point with GlassFab:
Guy ordered two pieces of BK7 glass 13" in diameter and about
.87" thick.  This was at the end of maybe 4 hours of being on the
phone.  Glass arrived and was the wrong spec and one piece the
wrong thickness.  Glass got returned and two whole new pieces
prepared at GlassFab.  The cost to GlassFab was a fair bit more
than the value of the glass (done twice plus all the phone
time!).  They didn't make money on that job although they did get
some good relations with a customer with a $600 order of glass.
The error was indeed GlassFab's problem but an optics shop would
have spend no more than about 15 minutes on the phone with the
salesman there and wouldn't have needed to have asked all of the
questions but rather would have gotten the glass without the
curve generation that the amateur wanted and thus the glass would
have been done a lot faster and probably wouldn't have had the
other problem with the glass in the first place.
I've had dealings with Newport and the only problem that I've had
was getting the right person to take the order.  I'm also used to
ordering things from suppliers so I already have all of the
little questions answered by myself before the order is placed.
Bob May
bobmay at nethere.com
http: slash /nav.to slash bobmay
http: slash /bobmay dot astronomy.net
Replace the obvious words with the proper character.

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