Supplier reliability issues

Lately I have become more wary of having to use local people and companies to help me do various things. The main problems being reliability and communication.

Examples:

1. A new supplier that phoned me to offer their services does not answer phone calls at different times of the day. The same applies to email enquiries. I wanted to buy something and was willing to pay for that, but now they have lost a sale since I have to yet again resort to the overseas suppliers who take longer due to shipping delays but deliver the goods.

2. Someone who was doing repairs for me seems to have lost some things that were supposed to have been repaired. Repairs that would take a few hours at most, I only ended up getting those back between two and three months later. Most of the time no communication at all when I enquired about the status.

3. A company overseas that does some manufacturing also doesn't respond to enquiries (email or telephone). I don't see how they can sell things if they operate like that.

The end result is: I am sceptical at best to give anybody some work to do and with that adding to the lack of experience and unemployment.