Mitchell has a very long history of behaving very badly. This what you describe is only one of the ways he does it. He also has longtime satisfied customers, but to me, a "maybe you'll get what you ordered, maybe it'll be as described, maybe you'll be charged the quoted price" gamble isn't good enough. With vendors like Mitchell and Layson, you might get good service and a fair deal on a correct part, but you equally might get badly screwed. The argument is sometimes made "But he's the only one who has the part!". This is almost never actually the case; if you look hard enough and have enough patience you'll usually eventually find what you need, though it can be difficult to find some items elsewhere. This is in large part due to Mitchell's astoundingly predatory buying behaviour — grabbing parts off the table in front of a swap meet buyer who is in the middle of getting the money out of his wallet to pay the agreed price, throwing money at the seller, and walking off with the parts, that kind of thing. (No, I'm not making it up.) And then there was that mysterious fire that burned down one of Mitchell's large warehouses full of insured NOS parts...which just happened to happen right when Mitchell was in hot water with the IRS for back taxes owed.
He's tried to sell his whole business on eBay for multiple millions of dollars a few times, and had no takers.
You may want to put up a "Parts Wanted" ad and see if you can get pointed in another direction for what you're after.
