🚀 go-pugleaf

Howdy!  I was wondering if I should post this message, but I think people
might be helped by this.  I work for a competitor of Gateway, and according
to our sales department, we've been getting spillover business from Gateway. 
People would order from them and find out they can't deliver within a couple
of weeks.  This is on 386SX and 386 machines.  Our company tries to ship
withiin 48 hours of recieving an order in comparison but sometimes we have
problems getting certain parts.  Tape drives we normally special order for e
xample.
 
When I mean having trouble getting parts, there are two troubles.  The first
is distributor trouble.  Since we special order tape drives that delays an
order.  Currently there is a shortage of 80386-25 chips, so that can cause
delays in getting 80386-25 motherboards.  We have gotten a few of them with
33mhz chips!  There is currently a shortage of Conner 104MB hard drives.  Our
sales manager called Conner and found out they were on "emergency allocation"
for their hard drives and that they were backordered 3000 units!  We had
temporarily switched to another brand of IDE drive until they start shipping
again.  These are examples of distributor trouble.
 
Sometimes you can have trouble just buying the parts -- vendor trouble. 
[this is speculation]  Gateway pretty much has the lowest prices out there,
so it goes to figure that they're running on a real low margin.  They may not
have enough money to tie up in stock for an order.  This'll cause problems
getting parts -- the tape drives example from above except with motherboards.
 
Anyway I hope this is informative.  I don't intend to reveal who I'm working
for because I think its wrong to say something negative about a competitor
while mentioning who they can get the goods from.  If a company can't ship
within two weeks, or strings you along beyond that I feel that something
might be wrong...
 
Disclaimer:  I'm speaking for myself and all of the above should be taken
as my opinion only!
 -Tom
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