There's a difference between a shop and someone acting as a middle-man who's drop shipping.
A real shop will have the post-sales support that a middle-man wont. If you have an issue with the product, take it up with the shop. They should be the ones supporting you if your product isn't working as advertised, if it needs to be replaced, etc., etc. The shop can then deal with the manufacturer however they want.
The whole point of being a distributor is because the customer deals with you, not the manufacturer. If you're just in it for some quick cash like most of these online places are, then you middle-man it, drop-ship products, and make the customer go to the manufacturer for support.
So yes, never give money to a middle-man. It's funny because this dude transitioned from building his own crap (or rather not building his own crap if it takes him 10 month to do what I did in a week including shipping), where he should have had the absolute best customer support of anyone, do a middle-man who's drop-shipping where his customer support is still terrible.
tl;dr middle men are bad, shops aren't if they know how to run a business.