Hi guys, I used to be the assistant manager of a model shop in the UK and thought I would put my 2p worth into this thread. it is a well known fact around the UK based shops that the suppliers run out of stock quite quickly. Half the time it is because they are waiting for their suppliers stock to come in, ready to be sent from the supplier to the shop but sometimes, if there is something 'special' with regards to a racing type of item, a few of the shops in the UK will put in mega sized orders to fill their own shop up with. That's fine and all, but it means that some of the other shops then cannot get the stock in for themselves. We used to take the customers details, and then find out if the supplier had the item in stock and how long it would take to get to us or if it was not in stock, how long it would take to get to them, and then to us. Whatever, we did n't take money (unless the customer wanted to leave a deposit) until the item was ready to be packaged up and sent out. We, at the time (7 years ago) did n't do internet type ordering but the same way in which we treated 'walk in's' would have been the same way that we treated any orders taken over the Internet. The bottom line is if we did n't have it to send out, we would n't charge for it! I have dealt with many of the UK shops since then and had no troubles. My local shop is Action Model Centre, although I normally just drive up there or order over the telephone rather than the Internet. Cheers, Chris.