in my world.. budget reigns.. and have found success is more a function of what i do with them.. once i get them more than anything else ... and i live within the coda of i would rather buy 5 twenty dollar plants for $100 ... rather than get two or 3 larger for the same money .... but we each have our goals.. and budgets .... will .. FFB.. firefighterboy.. the king of getting his hands on stuff.. did a series of posts that actually reviewed what he rec'd .. and i think there was some trick to his post naming.. but as i was not in the market at the time.. i didnt follow them all.. nor recall the titles for searching purposes ... good luck.. oh.. and BTW.. the collectors lament.. just because you want them.. doenst necessarily mean they are available ... good luck with that part ... or that they are all available from the same provider .... ken

Agreed about the online sales tax. We have roads to drive those delivery trucks over because of taxes that support a common infrastructure. Someone's got to pay for that stuff and it winds up being defenseless, voiceless children in absent monies (i.e., shorted education budgets -- I couldn't understand what I was talking about here either!) if we're all not careful. Also, another downer-voice to add here is to be sure to check carefully about the warrantees from some of these places. There's no regulation, I guess, for these online sites so consequently they can really just say whatever they'd like. For example that they're an "authorized dealer". But if you call, say, Franke, or Whirlpool - just pulling those names out of a hat - point is if you call the actual manufacturer and ask, say, "is homeclick an authorized dealer" you should be prepared to receive quite the talking-to. For some manufacturers, having bought the product from a non-authorized dealer won't really make much difference in the event of a failure; they'll still honor a warrantee. Others are cracking down and saying no authorized-rep, no service. And sometimes they're not really very nice about it either -- which is a little bizaree since it's actually really quite difficult, as a consumer, to know who's authorized to sell what (not to mention why). Nevertheless -- it's something to think about and investigate if you can stand to. And doing so requires more skepticism than I for one am even comfrotable with. That is, when I see a sign that says "authorized dealer", I am inclined to believe it, even to the point of arguing with the actual manufacturer ("but it says..."). So from there, YMMV. After starting to wake up to what a big bad world it sometimes actually is out there, and in weighing all the political pros/cons of brick-mortar vs free-market arguments and the like, I have been immensely happy doing online business with ABT in Chicago -- they price-match, are in fact authorized reps, with salesmen from a "real" brick-mortar" store who will talk endlessly and patiently with you and ... they will go to bat for you warrantee-wise. I will forever be grateful to them for just handling several problems with a Miele oven. Those guys are totally amazing. Chicagoans on this site have piped in that they are in person too. I'm glad you've had good experiences with homeclick but until you've had a problem you'd like to be supported on, it's hard to know how they've performed. It's like saying "yeah, my car insurance is *great* - I've never had a claim!" -- which is terrific but doesn't qualify you to comment on the insurer's capacity to, um, insure you.

A couple of years ago EuroStoves has been very active in this forum, and people who bought from them seemed to generally be quite happy. You might want to reach out to them. I see that they still list Bluestar on their website, but not all configurations are available for online sale. I wouldn't be surprised if Bluestar changed their policy with regards to internet sales; lots of vendors have been doing that in the last few years.

I think it depends somewhat on where the item needs to ship from. I know a lot of stuff is backordered right now due to line haul issues as well as supply issues. COVID-19 has affected manufacturing and also shipping and processing, and I don't think the fires out west have helped the shipping situation either. If it's listing as in stock and ready to ship, though, that seems to rule out the manufacturing side, at least. Have you inquired whether it might make sense to have them cancel the delayed order and place a new order? Sometimes that moves you to the back of the line, but sometimes it can also get you out of a delay cycle ... it might be worth asking. I've seen items that store level inquiry says the item is backordered without a date but online shows as orderable with a date (though I don't know how accurate it is); I've also seen items that show as out of stock online but are orderable/available if you call because they can ship from a store that has the item ... it depends on company policies and how their shipping/ordering works. I find sometimes you can get different levels of answers from calling a store (if they have one) vs. customer service, though it depends on the company again.