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The original was posted on /r/homelab by /u/k1rika on 2023-08-30 20:59:43+00:00.

I have - much to my wallets dismay - recently started to get more fiber infrastructure into my homelab and also continued to buy a lot of other server related equippment as usual. What really disturbed me, like in a good but unexpected way: The customer service has been far above standard multiple times now with different companies. One example: the last vendor just now even went so far to see my order, made a (correct) assumption about what I would intend to use it for, concluded that it won’t work and told me that, effectivly resulting in me changing and removing some things from my order, i.e. less direct revenue for the vendor and quite some time wasted for him to explain to me what my misstake was. Yet he still took the effort.

Now I am kind of curious, how has your experience been with buying more industrial-oriented gear as a private individual as opposed to shopping in rather casual markets?

Is better customer service the standard there? Am I just used to the horrible typical consumer markets and this is like it is supposed to be, or had I just luck with my very helpful vendors? I always wonder how they can afford to spent the extra time on their customers needed for such service. Do they just hope some b2c clients might order in their shops and later do the same in their company role b2b after they had a good experience there or are they maybe just so worried about returns they try to get everything right from the start?