[MrJohnston]

Some thoughts that might "alleviate" the pain next year..

* There have been two occasions when I ordered something from Vex "next day" and it did not get shipped by the end of the second business day. I called Vex the next morning, they apologized and sent it immediately. Blunders do happen (on both ends of ordering - I'm usually at fault), but when Vex has had one for us, they have remedied it immediately.

* Shipping days are a reality. We generally don't have to ship internationally (though we had one year we bought quite a few electronics from some company in Austria....), but we still need things in a rush and sometimes a small company gets overwhelmed with our order (and 2000 orders from other teams). To mediate this, we try to order "basic" parts in October and November. For instance, we have the parts in our shop on Kickoff to build either a tank drive base or a swerve base - and enough frame pieces to adjust to whatever size needs we might need. We also have a small collection of wheels, motors, pistons and electronic doohickeys. This gives us the ability to start prototyping and building as soon as we have a design. We just need to order specialty parts. Is this more expensive? A little. However, we find that purchasing all these parts in the fall allows us not to pay some of the extreme "next day air" prices we'd otherwise need. In other words, a larger percentage of our expenditures actually go to "robot parts" than shipping companies. We do spend more, overall, this way. But it does alleviate a lot of stress.

* There has got to be somebody in Israel that makes most of the items you need, yes? For instance, we often will buy all of the aluminum we need at a local warehouse - we can order it online and pick it up the next business day. With no shipping costs, its cheap.