Adafruit Blocks University of Waterloo

In the emails, you can see that Adafruit checked with the supplier to make sure nothing had changed. They still got back to the customer after just 3 hours.

It certainly isn't typical, at least among "big name" suppliers dealing with "institutional" customers.

For example, I've ordered chemicals from Fisher and the composition wasn't up to spec, which I should have known by reading the fine print. But they refunded me $several hundred anyway, and I kept the kinda-wrong chemicals. This sort of thing happens a few times a year (things like the ice thaws during delivery, etc.) and they always fix the problem immediately without asking for proof. Sometimes it's my fault, sometimes it's their fault, and sometimes it's fate-- But they never ask for proof.

Similarly, Thorlabs bends over backwards to accommodate customers, and has shipped me free replacements when I broke their $hundreds-thousands stuff by using it in a somewhat out-of-spec manner.

Also, any mainstream antibody supplier will reship or refund orders if you call them up and say that their product didn't work well.

I haven't ordered raw materials for semiconductors in a really long time, but I assume that any good supplier behaves in a similar way. At worst, I'd expect them to ask for some sort of minimal proof as to why their product was out of spec. Of course if the customer gives indications of being a scammer it's reasonable to cut them off, but asking for replacement of $hundreds is absolutely normal behavior.

Customer support should have been able to figure out that the customer really wanted the original product for one reason or another. They were even willing to part with their refund. In any case, completely blacklisting the whole University of Waterloo is not the appropriate response. I can't even fathom what action would merit that kind of a response.

Since the word "etch" is mentioned, my guess is that the team was performing some kind of IC fabrication process (or some thing similar), possibly involving Reactive Ion Etching.

In this regard, I can understand the frustration. The etching process itself may take up a lot of time. Not to mention the pattern on top of the substrate may require several stages to be established before etching, costing time (hours to days) and money (we are talking about photoresist, metal like gold etc, and other non-metal coatings). One step gone wrong then you have to throw everything in the bin and start over.

Since the etching time cannot be controlled in this batch (from 5 mins to 30 mins), this may suggests that the "ITO glasses" are not the same. And since there is no way to tell, the logical approach is not to bother with the remaining samples and simply ask for the new batch.

True, but it does still seem like cutting your nose off to spite your face

Disclaimer: I am not the writer of the article. I've only linked it.