Hi.

Well, there is good news and more-or-less-good-well-not-really-but-not-bad news.

I have been talking to the suppliers of the tuner modules, and they have told me many things, which are presented below in easy-to-read form:

1) The weatherband module has been discontinued (booo!)
2) The european module has also been discontinued (booo! again)
3) The replacement is a module that has both the weatherband and LW/MW/SW functionality (hurrah!)
4) It's 40% more expensive than the other two modules (booo!)
5) I can probably get some (hurrah!)
6) But I have to buy at least 200 (booo!)
7) Although the lead time seems to be fairly short, at least if I place an order soon (hurrah!)
8) It appears that the supply may dry up completely for all intents and purposes after this batch (booo!) (Although this is subject to interpretation, E&EO)

So, I'm in negotiation with the bank to allow me to spend ~6000 quid on parts, and the supplier to actually supply me with them. I'm also chasing up the other bits that have proven to be difficult to lay hands on, which thankfully are much cheaper.

I have orders outstanding for at least 140 kits, and they're still coming in steadily if slowly. I'm intending to get enough modules to fill current orders plus some extra for future ones, but I can't really justify too many extras. Hopefully with the next 3 months I will be able to ship 200+ kits, which will clear the backlog and allow for some new orders. This may be more than the 60 or so difference between the current order list and the stock situation, since the takeup isn't 100%.

Also, perhaps people here can answer a question that has been vexing me recently - what is a suitable number of times to try contacting someone about their order payment and what is a valid time to wait for an answer before assuming that they are no longer interested? At the moment I am trying three times over about 6 weeks before I decide they are unreachable/not interested/dead and pass their order over in favour of the next in line, unless I have reason to believe there is good cause to wait for longer. Is this reasonable? Too long?

The problem is that I can't issue payment requests for more orders than I have stock for, in case everyone actually follows through, but at times the takeup is fairly low (around 60-70% at the moment, getting larger as newer orders are reached). This means that a lot of orders are severely delayed beyond what would be ideal, since I need to wait for a request to time out before I can offer it to the next in line.

Comments?

pca