what does everybody think is reasonable for shipping times on mail order parts? I have started to assemble some upgrade parts for dunceCar and have found a variety of shipping times some of these have exceeded my expectations to others that were well below my expectations; here are some examples:
1 manufacturer I ordered a part from them, I got an email when the order was confirmed, an email when the part shipped (2 days later) and an email when it was shown as delivered (4 days from order date) this is well above my expectations.
1 manufacturer agreed to sell me components of a kit to upgrade my current set of parts to a higher spec and when I placed the order I got an email that custom orders take 2-3 weeks to build and the parts were shipped just over 2 weeks after I placed the order. They set expectations and met the fastest end of them.
1 manufacturer the order sat on the website as "processing" for 1 week, i emailed them twice before they responded that the part would ship the next business day, to date I have no follow up that confirms if it actually shipped.
by far however, the worst is 1 manufacturer that sold me a set of brackets and after placing the order and not hearing from them for 2 weeks I followed up and was told that they didn't realize they were out of raw stock to make the part and would pick up more the following Monday, to date more than a week after that i have no indication if the part shipped, etc. At this point I have been waiting for the part for nearly 3 weeks.
I fully understand that in the world of custom car parts and JIT delivery it is impossible to inventory everything and in several cases it may take 2-3 weeks before the job gets to production in the queue, so my question is what do you consider acceptable? also when its taking longer than expected what level of communication is appropriate?