Were vendors willing to work with you directly or was there some process to building a relationship with them? And what were some of the challenges you ran into while doing the replacement?
I somehow found a store in Queens that sold AC parts to repairmen ~ no idea how I originally found it.
I remember Citi-biking over the 59th street bridge to pick up stuff ~ first capacitors, eventually a motor - which is what ended up being the real issue.
The store got a kick out of working w me at first but I think they eventually found it annoying. I suspect repair-folks don't do a lot of returns. EG - if they buy a capacitor and then it's not what was wrong, they end up keeping it for another job whereas I retired it. Also, when I bought the motor that was the manufacturer specified replacement, it wasn't a perfect match for some other part of the unit. I had to bike back to the store and the guy gave me some bushings (which solved the issue) but real repair people would probably know that the shaft thickness changed on that motor and carry some bushings around anyway.
So yeah they were fine to do business with me but they normally deal with large-size orders probably, so my stuff was "cute" but most certainly not a priority for them.
