If you can get the principals on the phone when you call, that's what's important to me.
And I completely agree. Jeff Korneff, George Wright, A.J. Conti, Nelson Pass, and Paul McGowan have all been incredibly generous with their personal time -- and have all seemed to be answering a much higher calling than mere short-term retail success.
I've been particularly impressed with Paul McGowan's accessibility and level of personal interest. I wouldn't call PS Audio a "little guy supplier" as in the title of this thread -- at least not compared to some of these other names. But my experience has been that it's pretty typical for Paul to answer an e-mail within hours, take on a personal issue as his own, suggest a better-than-hoped-for solution, and assign a very capable member of his team to implement it.