Michael A. Terrell wrote:
dpb wrote:
On 10/25/2016 11:25 PM, Larry Jaques wrote:
...

Any electrical supply has hickeys, though, and those are in nearly
every town in many countries. I'm surprised that so few people think
of those when they shop for something potentially hard-to-find.
...

Well, I for one always think of them, but if there's _any_ alternative
I'll go elsewhere as OTC pricing is simply exorbitant -- not just high
but obscene. I needed a flex conduit 1" box termination and they
charged me almost $20!!!! Could almost have driven the 60 mi to nearest
HD for the difference excepting for the time...


My home town had to Electrical supply houses. The old line store
would only deal with contractors, and they could take a half day to pull
the order for over the counter sales. The other gave me a $2,000 line
of credit the first visit. I bought most items by the
bag/box/bundle/reel, so I got their column D pricing on everything. A
typical stop was $100 to $500. They pulled the order in under 15
minutes, and loaded it into my truck. The guys that worked out of a
beater car would complain that they only needed one or two items, so
they should get priority.

The manager informed them that I bought in full quantities and I
paid cash. I saw one buy six feet of Romex and two clamps. It took
about half as long to get that, as the entire list of my order.

They argued that I wasn't an electrician. They were told that I did
industrial electronics work, where downtime was expensive to my
customers. Their customers were too cheap to hire a licensed contractor.

Ha!

6 feet of romex. The friendly electrical supply house here will load your
vehicle up even if you're clearly not in the trade. The other places with
the shiny showrooms seem to be bothered by any sort of counter sale. They
also seem to have huge warehouses full of nothing as even simple stuff
doesn't seem to be in stock for some reason. I don't get it, but whatever.