Do you purchase direct from manufacturers?

[zog]

Well as I can tell you in THIS THREAD , dealing with GE engineers was a fruitless effort that cost us $480 for extra parts that we couldn't even use, and we still had to go through a distributor, which GE and the distributor refused to return the parts.

But your thread was about small equipment I would expect a distributor to carry and support. JDSmith is refering to expensive engineered power distribution equipment.