Got stiffed by an overseas supplier that I've been working with for years.

I'm out thousands of dollars, spent dozens of hours of time and stress on this one stupid order, out of supplies, losing customers becasue of production delays, and there's nothing I can do about it. The order was supposed to have a lead time of 20 days. I had to pay 50% up front and the other 50% when the product was ready to ship, like usual. And then when they were supposedly finished, and I had the invoice paid, they surprised me with telling me that I had to set up the shipping, which was a huge pain in the ass. It's been 4 months since I paid the final invoice and set up shipping. And it still hasn't shipped. I'd go weeks without getting a response from my emails. When I did finally hear back, it was just excuses on the delays, first they said they moved their facilities and later blamed their courier. Now, it's back to no answers from my emails.

I've been understanding and polite in my emails. But I finally told them yesterday, if I don't see movement on the tracking in the next couple days that I wanted a refund and they'd never hear from me again. But there's no part of me that thinks they'll actually wire my money back.

I'm just pissed. And now I'm gonna lose more money because I have to get a rush shipment from another supplier. And hope they don't steal my money as well. This company supplied another major component of my product, which is custom and requires an expensive initial setup that I'm going to have to find another supplier to make.

I wish I could find reasonably priced suppliers in the US. But everyone I've reached out to charges 5-10 times the price per unit than it costs to get the same thing from other countries. I've been paying $0.17 per unit, US companies want over $1 per unit, plus 15-20k for a custom mold. And it adds up quick when I'm buying 10s of thousands at a time.

Fuck these assholes.

Be careful out there.