Agree with some of the points that Jay makes, and I disagree with a lot too. The small guys are never going to give you the packaged assembly line experience that NewEgg or Amazon gives you. We should expect to pay a little more, and deal with a little headache. This is a nich market. In a way it is like ordering auto parts online. We have to know what we're looking for, and sometimes we pay more because it is a specialized part. Telling the e-tailers to make their own bitspowered part is not really feasible IMHO.

"If you want to know how things should run, look at how Michelle at Swiftech gets stuff done. Lets say my Apogee XT block came with a bent bolt or missing nut .... No questions asked, ...no BS, simply gets the address and phone number and 3 days later you get what you need. Also, Alex (the original owner of Petras) did a fairly good job of getting stuff returned or fixed."
Michelle is good, but they have their processes too. Just pointing out that when they had a bad screw I had to scan and send a copy of the reciept. Not a problem, but you make it seem like they just do stuff no questions asked, which in my experience isn't true. Although it is expected behavior.

Also, being really good at calculus and physics does not make you a good engineer, but it can help ... Take fluid and thermodynamics while you're at it :-)