Special Announcement, Feb. 12, 2012

We have reinstated our temporary HOLD on New Orders and Inquiries; it will now run through March 1, 2012:  This is to allow us to catch up with current orders.  Please click here for more information.

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At present, we accept e-mail orders (and old fashioned “walk-in” business of course!) For e-mail orders:

1)  You can Contact Us, or, we now have an online fill-in form for Orders and Requests for Quotation.   Contact Us is a little easier for pricing questions and such that might precede an actual order or quotation, as it does not ask for address information.  Ditto for most questions about repairs. But if you want shipping included, the link for the form is at the bottom of this page.  (We really want you to read the information on this page, before proceeding!)  Note that the form does NOT provide for online payments, or calculate shipping.  It is just a convenient way for you to send us a list of what you want, and how you want it shipped, so we can price a total of those things for you.  If you indicate “Cheapest Way”, we will choose the least  costly method for your particular package (UPS, FedEx Ground, or USPS).  However, if you specifically want to exclude, for example, Parcel Post (can be rather slow), please let us know.  Also, indicate if you want shipping insurance (highly recommended), and be sure to include your complete* ship to address.

*Note:  We can estimate shipping with just a zip code / postal code, in most cases, however, without full information, we have to estimate a bit high.  FedEx and UPS shipping costs in particular are quite “sensitive” to your exact location, whether an address is a residential or commercial / business address, etc.  (Hint:  Shipments to business addresses are generally cheaper than to residential addresses, so if it is ok for you to receive a shipment at work, go for it!

Special instructions for items to be sent in to us for repair, are here.

If you are “local”, we can usually arrange “local pickup”, or in some cases we can deliver to you.   Please Contact Us for details.

2)   We will e-mail you an “order proposal”.  See examples here.

Note that shipping cost is at our actual cost, plus a handling fee for small orders:

$0.01 – $25.00*:     Handling Fee = $3.00

$25.01 – $50.00*:     Handling Fee = $2.00

$50.01 – $100.00*:      Handling Fee = $1.00

$100.01  & up*:     Handling Fee = $0.00

* Cost of goods / services before shipping, insurance, tax (if applicable), etc.

3)   Please confirm the order proposal, and mail it to us with a Postal (USPS) Money Order or a Money Order or Cashier’s Check drawn on a U.S. bank.  (We also accept other types of money orders such as those from Wal-Mart, etc., but since those are more easily forged, those and personal checks must be cleared before shipment can be made).  Also see below for PayPal payments.

Note: At this point, feel free to return email or fax us your order, and indicate that payment has been mailed.  That will give us a bit of a head-start, especially if you need matched units, curves, data measurements, etc/  We will ship your items once payment has been received / cleared.  (There is no clearance delay, of course, for bank or postal M.O’s, etc.)

Our item prices include packaging to carrier guidelines:  This means double boxing of, or cardboard wrap around drivers, and plenty of cushioning in the form of “packing peanuts”, foam, or crumpled paper, between inner and outer box.  This may increase your shipping cost slightly, but is well worth it.

4) Generally, shipments that do not involve testing work, etc., on an item, will go out a 2-3 business days after receipt of your payment.  USPS Priority Mail shipments tend to go out fastest, as USPS will pick up Priority Mail packages, here, at no additional cost.  Fed Ex and UPS can take an extra day or two, as their nearest shipping locations are some distance from us, and we don’t go “running over there” every day.  However, if you have special needs / timing on shipments, please contact us:  We will do everything we can to accomodate you! 

PayPal Payments

We can accept PayPal payments, but have at least for now decided against providing online PayPal Invoicing, as that pushes all our PayPal payers into PayPals’ highest fees.  We DO pass on PayPal fees to our customers who wish to pay by PayPal, rather than build those costs into our prices.  This keeps our prices as low as possible for as many customers as possible.

For more information, please indicate that you wish to pay by PayPal when you request your total order cost, a shipping quote, etc.

International Orders

We can accept orders from outside the U.S. when paid by PayPal.  PayPal charges a little extra for international transactions, but we will note this in your quote.  Note that there is quite a bit of extra paperwork involved:  Typically this includes a Commercial and ProForma Invoice, A Customs Declaration, and sometimes additional documentation, depending on what country the items are being shipped to, the method of shipment, etc.  Generally, we charge $10-$15 for the extra time involved to do the paperwork.  However, if we run into an unusually complicated situation, this can be higher.  Again, we will always let you know no later than the time at which we send you a final / “complete” quote / order proposal.

More significantly, as many of our overseas visitors know, medium size shipments (bigger than a letter, smaller than a container) going overseas can be very expensive.  If mail service in your country is secure & reliable, then that is usually by far the most economical method.  When using the mail, when feasible, insured United States Postal Service Priority Mail Flat Rate Boxes are usually the best choice, with delivery times to many countries stated as “6-10 days”.  When mail service is not so reliable, we can of course ship by FedEx or UPS.  Unfortunately, while very reliable, and speedy, their overseas shipping costs are quite high, very often prohibitively so.

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Order Form / Request a Quote

Here is the link to our online form to
Make an Order or Request a Quote

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Online Ordering

We would like to provide more online ordering / payment services to our customers.  This brings up a question, however:  PayPal fees, credit card merchant fees, and so on, etc., are significant.  We think PayPal and Google Checkout are the best bet, but, to be fair to our cash (check, M.O., etc.) customers, we either need to:

1)  Raise prices slightly, and give “cash” customers an equal discount, OR:

2)  Charge PayPal and Google Checkout customers the same fees PayPal and Google charge us.

We are leaning toward “2″, as it keeps our prices more competitive, and is more “exact”.   That is in fact how we are presently handling PayPal payments.  “1″would be a little easier (for us), but makes it a little harder for our customers to compare prices.  We would like your feedback:  Please comment here.