Yeah, in this case the manufacturer probably didn't have any extra chips. Also, in my experience, these companies were unwilling to go outside their system and

Yeah, in this case the manufacturer probably didn't have any extra chips. Also, in my experience, these companies were unwilling to go outside their system and charge a markup for their own stock. Instead of giving me the ICs directly, I had to wait for them to ship an order of dev boards to Digikey that I'd already purchased and they were building to order.