I purchased 8, 1/2" end mills through Helical to attempt a Chatter reduction strategy. I bought them through Cutting Edge Tool Supply who I prefer to work with on stuff brands make me order that I can't find at an online eCommerce retailer. The Helical website boasted 2-3 day shipping and displayed in stock inventory, and I had the impression Harvey was a consistent quality vendor.
Thursday of last week I requested tracking toward close of business at 3 business days, and got nothing. Tuesday I called CETS, no news (this is not normal for CETS). I then called Helical and tried to figure out what is going on. They explained to me that CETS is not an "authorized distributor" so CETS is buying from someone else, and they could find me as a customer in their system from orders at some point with another vendor who they would drop ship to me for, but they couldn't find my order because of the double tiered distribution they were forcing on my ordering situation.
This sales game crap has had a mill down with a guy being paid to run that machine for about 5 business days now. We have no idea where the Helical tool is, we don't want to order 8 more 1/2" end mills at nearly $100 each just to have our existing order delivered, and it really begs the question why do the customers of Helical get treated like this?
I have no idea when that mill will be up, but I've got new reasons to avoid Harvey if I can do anything else. It's interesting when companies cripple a business model and put themselves in a no win situation. Decent tools, but where's the availability when in stock items can't get to the customer?