I appreciate all the help I have received from USA suppliers of parts for our classics through the years.  It is inevitable that parts availability will decline, available parts become scarce and more expensive, suppliers look elsewhere for business...we will fade in importance to them as they receive less business from us and move on to other customers. 

I am not here to dump on our suppliers, some of my problem is that I am east coast and almost all of them are in the Land of Fruits and Nuts, I might be calling at their break time or lunch time or yoga time or who knows.  One of my longtime east coast suppliers doesn't even have web ordering and now never answers the phone, message just says to leave a message or to email.  For a while there Google was showing his company as out of business.  

I recommend/request/beg that USA parts suppliers revise their website shopping carts to show when items are in stock or backordered before the order is placed.  I have 6 orphan cars in pieces and it is frustrating to call and have a recording tell me that I am next in line with a wait time of 7 minutes, then after 7 minutes a recording tells me to leave a message. Website lets me pick a part, wow nice text, pretty picture, click and add to my shopping cart, thank you for your order.  No info on whether it is in stock or not.  I tried that a few times only to find out later by email that it was backordered and they would let me know when it is in stock.  No big deal, I had time.  After a couple month I email them, where is my part,  yeah sorry about that,  NLA.  Not good. 

I usually need to know today, so now I just pick up the phone to ask do you have the parts...no answer, I leave a message asking for a call back. At the end of the day, never got call back, I shut the shop and go home.  I get on the internet, click on one of the UK suppliers, site shows stock status, boom yesss in stock thank you very much boom ordered in cart done.  Fine, they had what I need, you know what I go ahead and order multiples of them, boom stocked up.  I am going to need the same part for the next car, and the next, and what the heck it will still fit in one small box, so now I increase the qty and I also poke around the site and oooh look also have those, pick other things I might need someday, just to make the intl shipping cost delta worthwhile for a box that size. Same lesson was learned by Amazon, guys.

aaaand now some teenager is going to show me how to click on some imogee thing on a phone that would show me the stock status and I will be so embarrassed and have to mea maxima culpa, yes?  Hey if it teaches me how to get my parts already,  apologies are in stock ready to go.

Thanks!  Looking forward to doing more business with a U.S. based supplier especially with larger items where shipping is less of a burden than going overseas.

Hello Andrew,
I apologize that we are very short-handed on the phones. The best bet is to leave an inquiry on the Help Desk, and we'll answer as quickly as we can. And yes, your two orders are in the system :)

Hello;  I hope someone from our host sees this.  I tried contacting MM twice regarding 2 outstanding orders I placed 4 weeks ago, the site says contact for availability so I called and got a voicemail yesterday no response.  No response to email either.  These are not big dollar items I would just like to know if my already paid for orders have been processed.

Andrew