This is very true. I order specialty stuff from many different vendors because I'm not going to special order it from a store, wait 2-5 weeks and then pay full MSRP after driving back out there; in my world "in-stock is king" and then we'll look at price (and that approach does sometimes mean the sale goes to a
LGS). In almost all cases, the stores online that I order from, most of which have a B&M presence as well so may not be the stores primarily targeted by
PP and
FFG, have stepped up whenever there was any sort of issue. I've not had any major issues with the local stores so it's not really fair for me to say they wouldn't step up in similar circumstances, but when they won't even negotiate a discount on prepaid preorders it's hard to feel as though they value the relationship with their customer.
I've already priced out what fully padding out my Team Yankee forces would cost. While that borders on "stuff for the stuff god" in that I didn't already buy those models because they were unlikely to see use, they still technically HAVE one. At the moment though I'm somewhat cash-poor (another reason why their reaction was appreciated) so it will have to wait a little bit.