Ever have one of those days where you swear your e-mail is broken? Well, I'm having one right now, and it's really starting to cheese me off. Again.

I've been doing some serious product R&D for an idea I had a while ago. I'm not going to go in to it here (no patent yet ) but can say that it is an electronic device that I've been working on for over a year now. See, due to the nature of the device, running a single experiment takes about 6 months.

I've spent enough time on it to know that I'm officially not on a wild gundark chase. It's exciting.

At least, it was exciting... until yesterday.

I'm about to fire off several new experiment sets, modified to reflect the data I've gathered. To do that, I need a bunch of new materials, and my entire process is halted until I get this new stuff. I'd have ordered a while ago, but I couldn't, because the last experiment had yet to produce the data with which I designed this new experiment set.

Anyway, I had it all worked out, and placed a sizeable order with several places that maintain that they are, in fact, businesses. Several days ago.

I have yet to get a single "Yes", "No", "What?", or "Forget You!" from any of them.

Out of concern that my e-mail server was down, I sent several e-mails to several different versions of myself from accounts on servers outside my domain. They have all gotten through.

No, my e-mail isn't broken. The businesses I'm trying to deal with... are apparently broken.

I had the same problem when I started the first round of experiments. I had to go through a rep for a part that I wanted. A rep who refused to respond to any of my e-mails. I had to complain to the manufacturer before the jerk would even reply to a single e-mail, and when he finally did it was painfully obvious that he was sucking up because the manufacturer told him to. The whole process took about a month and a half.

How can they expect that anybody would ever use their parts to make anything, if they refuse to cooperate with those who are trying to design the new products? I mean, It's like these guys simply don't want my money. In a heartbeat, I'd take my money elsewhere, but there sort of isn't one.

I mean, geeze. Here we are. Communication has never been easier, these businesses totally need my money, and none of them can even give me a "We got your order, hold up a sec".

Now, putting off answering personal e-mails is totally understandable. But when you're in the sales department of your BUSINESS?

(I'd put an emotiYodiCon here, but there isn't one even nearly sufficiently angry enough)