 So I'm holding in my hand a piece of network cable that is grounded and shielded. So this is shielded twisted pair cable and here is what's left of a spool of it. Now I want to rant for a second here and that's what this video is about is where do we get all our stuff from? And why do we buy so much from Amazon? I just people keep coming up with this discussion a lot of oh you need to build these vendor relationships and then you get a good thing going with them blah blah blah. There's a reason I don't care and this is the perfect rant because it's just happened the other day. So this box of spool was purchased by one of our clients. They knew what cable they wanted. We do kind of an outside IT for them. They have an IT team that's remote so we work in collaboration with them because they have like internal IT for this rather large company. So they shipped this cable to the location and we did the physical part and did the running of the cable so you infrastructure. Now we've seen the part number it's on here of this cable blah blah blah. I've got it all turned over to the side here so I can read it but it tells me the exact part number and where they got it from. So they said hey we ran out of it we want more and they said can you guys just buy it? I said sure that's not a problem. We call up the company they bought it from and the first two emails were awful because they somehow assumed I didn't want a thousand foot spool. They thought I wanted a thousand thousand feet spools. So that turned into phone call email back and forth and then confusing emails back when I corrected them. They also changed the pricing on it and then fine we agreed okay we'll get another one customer knew how much it cost. This is more expensive when you get this shielded cable so the customer knew how much it cost and boom we want to order it. Well then they're like fill this form out fill this form out give me your tax ID then we're three emails in and I said I didn't fill something out right. I'm trying to get the account created and I said why didn't I look on Amazon. I go look on Amazon. They want for this cable this is Cat5e customers fine with Cat5e shielded because of what this is it's going just to a site to site system and over some equipment that so speed isn't really an issue it's connecting to this wireless bridge. So they were fine with Cat5e $366 a box is what this company want to charge us but we never got to that part because the form wasn't right. Oh yeah by the way when they sent me the form it's not like some online form I got to fill out they like sent me a PDF that I'm supposed to print right scan back send to them. You can see how stupid this process is here in 2018. This is a big company. I'm not gonna say their names I don't want to just badmouth the company because this is not just this company this is how we deal with a lot of these vendors. Here's stupid forms here's fill this out you miss something you got to wait for approval from our department and I'm like I'm not even getting credit. I am paying with my credit card which means you directly get the money I get the product end of story. Well I got aggravated very quickly went on Amazon found it so we went from $366 for this to getting it from Amazon. But it was a slightly different cable it was shielded twisted pair for $179. Wow what's the difference well one of the differences it's actually not Cat5 it's Cat6. So we got a better cable for $179 I spoke to no one I found the part number I clicked order I didn't pay any shipping and it's here done. And this is the common experience we have of the level of aggravation we did this when we had to buy some one off equipment when we were doing one of the other projects. We didn't realize it was on Amazon so we started talking to the vendor they gave us a list it was expensive they're like oh you need to become a partner program to do this and so there's more paperwork which I loath paperwork and it's always stupid PDFs that I'm supposed to scan and talk to the sales rep but I went and found the part number turns out that's on Amazon too. And same thing I had it in prior I had it before I would have got approved already arrived at our building and this is how Amazon's killing it. It's not it's these guys really had to stop and think it just put a Google form together or something something better than what you have and putting a bunch of sales people to talk to me who just get things wrong. What value did they provide to the process I didn't talk to a single person at Amazon. Now some people said well I don't have a good return relationship if you use Amazon exactly the opposite I won't lie. The two companies that have amazing returns is we do still buy stuff from New Egg. New Egg is they got it figured out I like New Egg and we probably shopped New Egg in Amazon and the same with Amazon we've had problems with product we just know this product was not right. Amazon just one a couple times so it's confusing about Amazon they told us to keep the product and they just sent us another one they didn't even want it back. We're like oh well that's cool. So I've had a great relationship with the customer service from Amazon. It's been wonderful model price. I've got a weird relationship with them. So they're another vendor we'll buy direct from but we've learned with model price and this is now they've bent me over twice on this. We needed stuff kind of in a hurry because sometimes customers are in a hurry so they said we want this done right away can you get it. Oh no problem. So we paid for overnight shipping. I have no problem with this customer approved. All right it's going to be this much to ship the cables going to be you know $300 we're going to get it over there real quick. No problem. We paid it. They charge my account. This is we ordered I don't know like 10 boxes of cable or whatever it was from them. What they had done though is we also got some little patch cables and couple miscellaneous things like yeah we'll get those at the same time. Just the way it's all in one order. Well they were out of stock on one color of patch cable so they delayed an entire overnight order and her excuse was and this happened twice. They did this and we we've learned a little bit more about how model price works that they didn't have the one in stock so they held the entire order. And we're like why is that reasonable you had the cable in stock yeah but we didn't have that we thought we'd have it in stock the next day. I'm like but you charge me for actually shipping. Oh yeah it will be shipped next day when it ships but it didn't ship yet. I'm like what's already been 24 hours now I'm behind. These are a little aggravations we have with them. Turns out though interesting thing about model price. If model price says out of stock on Amazon they can't sell it. This is Amazon's internal policy. If you don't have the product in stock they have to give you delivery dates that are real and Amazon enforces that. Turns out model price will say everything's in stock. We've learned this after dealing with them a few times and they'll ship it when it gets in stock so you can just order it in there. But if we buy model price via Amazon one is cheaper. I don't know why maybe I think it's usually the shipping I save a couple dollars there not much. It's very close in price but I get the product or it tells me it's out of stock. And we've learned if we try to order something that shows out of stock on Amazon we call them directly they'll let us order it but it seems to take like a week or two to get it. And this has been a problem we've run into several times with them. They've refunded the money and we've had to cancel orders when we ordered direct. But if we ordered model price via Amazon it works. The reason I have the Unify boxes. Unify actually is great. They have an easy online ordering system and I do buy direct from Unify. The only challenge we run to them their products that get in high demand for example right now here in July of 2018 is their cameras are in high demand. I think it's August 1st of 2018. Whatever day it is it's 2018. Their cameras are in really high demand so sometimes they're out of stock on them. But they won't let you order things that are out of stock because they'll tell you it's out of stock. Or they'll give you delivery dates that are out there. Unify direct is good. Unifying Amazon is wonderful. As a matter of fact a lot of times unifying Amazon for reasons that I may not completely understand are a whole lot less. They go on sale and I can get them for really a price. So back to the Amazon again. Now same problems. If you've ever had any issues in Amazon and if you ever heard of boxes but they just sent you another one. They're so easy to deal with. They have taken the pain out. It's not that I'm trying to be a fanboy of Amazon. I have a business to run. My business is not ordering products. My business is installing products, getting things delivered to customers and providing solutions. So if I have to spend a lot of time filling out forms dealing with sales reps who get things wrong. Waiting for approvals while customers wait for something to get installed. Well this is all non-value add to my day. And what so I can save $2 for some vendor. I'll give you a deal. And clearly they didn't. When you're talking $366 versus $179 for the almost the same product except for the one I'm getting from. Amazon being cat 6 not cat 5 which is a better product. I got nothing. I have a efficiency curve that I'm trying to work on. And Amazon really kind of fits that. Now if you're a company and you're watching this think about doing things better. I don't like a monoculture of we just order everything from Amazon. This is why I mentioned New Egg. We do still order especially when it comes to like PC parts and things like that. New Egg has great deals and has a great over the years. I mean we've had our New Egg account for years. They have been the most trouble free just like Amazon. Both of them. Now Amazon has weird issues with when they use their delivery carrier people. That's been a delivery dates on them. They tried to deliver a few times when they first started their local one here. We have a distribution center about a mile from here and they would try to deliver things at 6.30 in the morning. We never understood. We're like you know no one's here at 6.30 a.m. We're not a house. We're a business and why are you knocking on the door then? We finally got established business hours. So there's been a couple delivery issues when we use the local Amazon carriers. But when they use UPS and FedEx or your standard popular carriers, it pulls the service smooth as silk. They deliver because those people know when we're open and they got a process. Amazon's working on that so I won't lie. There's some issues there but like New Egg. Now one other company we order direct from is people ask, well where do you get the like the PF sense or firewalls? We buy it from Netgate Direct. There's another company that you go online. Clean ordering system just like Unify. I can order direct. I don't have to talk to anyone on the phone. And this is kind of a hiccup too. I don't really want to call a sales rep. Find my rep and send a phone with them. I just want the parts. I know what I want. We're IT installers. We install the same things a lot. Especially when it comes to cabling. I need this cable. I need that connector. We know exactly which one of these. I don't need a sales rep to babble on of. You know why I got this one on sale? I can get your file or it's off on it. But that's not the one I want. And this is just this round problem we have with all these value-added reseller companies and things like that. Their processes are archaic. They can be very difficult to deal with. They almost are a barrier. I just want to use online forms. It's 2018. Let me just buy directly online. But that's one of the reasons we buy so much from Amazon. We buy a lot from New Egg, especially for like the PC repair parts. And when we can, I love companies that sell direct and have a clear process. So if you're a company thinking about selling direct, please do. Look at the way Unify does it. Look at the way the folks over at Netgate slash PF Sense do it. There are a couple examples of direct buy vendors that we like a lot because their processes, I've actually never had to speak with anyone at either company in terms of purchasing their products. I already know what I wanted. They have it on their website. I click buy. I can create an account really quickly with just my email address and password. No filling out long credit forms when you're going to direct charge me like this company. They want my credit card, but I want to fill out forms in your business and tax ID. I don't mind giving all that. Please put it in a form. Don't send me a PDF and scan it back. You realize I have other things to do in filling out paperwork. It's stupid in 2018. So end of rant. That's just my thoughts on this. So if I'm going to share this video, whenever you're asking me the question, where do you buy all your stuff from, owning a business and IT and things like that? And I'm like, hell, Amazon. It's just, it's not like I said, do price shop Amazon, especially if you're looking to reorder, sometimes they raise prices back and forth so you may get a better deal on somewhere else, like New Egg or one of the other direct buy websites, the same with the Unifies. Sometimes you're less than Unifies. Sometimes they're more than Unify. Do price check it. But boy, if you're a company and you can make it as simple as they have, that's the key. It's not that we, Amazon's just some large company. They just make things simple. Make things simple and we'll buy from you. That's pretty much the formula for it. So I can get back to work, which I'm going to do now. Thanks.