I have seen this type of question before on Election Ballots,. Vote Yes if you don't want this school bond and Vote No to processing the School Bond. I thinks it was outlawed to put that type of proposal to a vote. Vote yes if you want it, No if you don't. An order form should be simple and clear. It cost more if you don't plate the holes . And a Discount of $50 if you do have the holes plated. It just looks cheaper to offer a lower price for a PCB that will require you to have Duel traces which will cost you more in the long run. This just makes it hard to compare prices with other venders. !!Just my 2 cents worth here!! Larry Taylor KF6JBG From: "Olin Lathrop" To: Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2003 1:23 PM Subject: [EE:] PCB Fax Express warning I sent 5 prototype boards to PCB Fab Express (http://www.pcbfabexpress.com) after someone here mentioned them. I wasn't aware of them previously, but it looked like a good deal from their web site. Their FAQ and ordering process makes it very clear that they don't do unplated holes unless you pay $50 extra. I did have some purely mechanical holes, but didn't care if they were plated, so I checked the button to not pay $50 extra to get unplated holes. I did the order and sent the data yesterday. Just now (afternoon of 24 December) I received an email telling me that my job contained unplated holes, that this was contrary to the parameters of the service I selected, and asking whether I want to pay the $50 extra to get unplated holes. My job was on hold until I replied. The tone of the message implied I had done something stupid and hadn't bothered to read their FAQ. Good thing I happened to be here on christmas eve and checked my email. Otherwise my job could have been held up for a long time. I might not have found out it was on hold until about the time the boards should have shown up. Neadless to say, I was pretty pissed that they put my job on hold for an answer I had already explicitly given by clicking one of their buttons on the order page. I called them and did get it straightened out pretty quickly. They will make the board with all holes plated (as they should have known to do in the first place). I asked how I could have specified to plate all holes (other than clicking the button explicitly saying so). They said I should have mentioned this in the comments box, although there was no hint that this was required. By the way, their excuse for all this nonsense was that they used to do it the other way, and customers would complain their holes got plated when they weren't expecting it. This is a pretty lame excuse because the FAQ and odering page make the policy quite clear. In fact, the ordering page forces you to select one of "Yes I'll pay $50 to get unplated holes", and "No, I don't want unplated holes". It seems they have now taylored their process to idiots at the expense of everyone else who can actually read. I'll keep everyone posted on how this test run goes. So: **** If your board has holes with no copper running to them and you don't care if they get plated, make sure to say so explicitly in the comments box, else your board will be held up until you reply. **** ***************************************************************** Embed Inc, embedded system specialists in Littleton Massachusetts (978) 742-9014, http://www.embedinc.com -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The list server can filter out subtopics (like ads or off topics) for you. See http://www.piclist.com/#topics -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The list server can filter out subtopics (like ads or off topics) for you. See http://www.piclist.com/#topics