Thanks, most of that more or less reinforces my thinking.

I went ahead and ordered the Waterfowl from Highland Sports in PA, which, like I said, seemed to have a good price, is much closer than that other coast, and seemed to have good policies. I put an order in through their web page on Sunday and tried to add an item with an e-mail on Monday morning.

That may have been a mistake. The first lady I talked to told me that the site was down, and seemed shocked that I'd put an order in. Seems that they have lost their domain (www.highland-sports.com), and the only way I got in was linking in from elsewhere. She knew nothing about the order. Later I talked to another gentleman that was more than a little dismissive, and, among other things, told me that it would be back ordered to Filson and take at least a week... that despite this:

"We'll make every effort to get products to our customers in a timely manner. But in some instances an item might not be in stock. In that case we'll overnight the product from the manufacturer, and ship it out to you the next day "

from their "info" page.

Now it seems that all of my e-mails to them are coming back with "delayed" messages, so they haven't gotten any of them.

Not a warm fuzzy.