Oddly enough, my experience with Amplis has been quite different. I am not associated with them and I am not an apologist for poor distribution.
As background, I am moving from being an amateur to a small time consumer of professional products for sale as an add-on to my normal income stream. In the past I have managed several large importation/distribution companies and have some understanding of the issues in that business.
I live in the Toronto area, and the retailer for professional products of all types is Vistek. Generally they do a good job, but even they cannot keep all SKUs in stock. I was really annoyed with their supply of Ilford GFS, but I then heard that Ilford had switched distributors to Amplis. This may be wrong but that is what I understood and it would explain the glitches in supply during the crossover period.
I contacted Amplis and they were willing to supply me with product, even though I was a very small consumer.
I encountered the same issue with buying BC products from Vistek. BC will not ship to Canada, and that makes some business sense for them even though we may not agree with it. Vistek do not stock it, Amplis does, so BC makes a profit, Amplis makes a profit, then Vistek makes a profit (for doing nothing). No wonder things cost so much in Canada. This is absurd but it is a small market.
My response was to buy canvas from Lexjet in Florida who would ship to Canada. Their customer service is superb, unfortunately their product also came with large black globs of guck and severe roll marks, so that was it for Lexjet.
Back to Amplis. I have placed many orders with them over the last six months and they have been happy to take them and allow me to pick them up at their location the following day. They have always had the stock I wanted, and I understand that your experiences may differ.
However, Amplis should never allow customers to pick up their own orders because viewing their back-door receiving/shipping area is like a view into the fourth world. Third world would be bad but their operation is simply awful. Every time I go there I see the same decrepit equipment, 5 or 6 slovenly “workers” who generally are having a party or watching TV. They are surrounded by a mess of product, which should be extremely embarrassing to management but evidently there is no serious attention given to the backroom operations.
Again, I have had no problem with customer service or supply from Amplis, but they are risking losing their whole business from their backroom operations.