Nonetheless, exchanges should not be written off completely. They are gaining ground in sectors in which commodities can be separated from other parts of the business. The major obstacle appears to be codification of difficult-to-estimate parameters (e. g., quality of customer service). Exchanges flounder when custom-ers discover they need something unexpected: emergency or rush service, design know-how, and so forth. Furthermore, just establishing a reliable relationship is costly. Expertise, credit worthiness, and general qualification to bid must be fac-tored in, none of which is easy to do.