Hallo Andy,

I had the same problem one half a year ago in Germany. Everything identical to your last reply. But samples never arrived!
After some weeks, I contacted german MAXIM distributor and people there were very, very unfriendly. Even more unfriendly than german distributors are used to be! 'Service desert Germany'...

Well, I'm no longer interested in getting 'free' samples and thereby being pissed. Instead, I buy them from RS Components, Reichelt or others. It's my experience, that designing with parts, you cannot get from normal distributors, but only from MAXIM distributors can reault in real desaster, because of bad availability. They do not have much on stock, and I know from people who had months and months to wait.
That's the bad face of MAXIM. On the other hand, performance of most of their special function chips is outstanding, and I never was badly surprised, just the oposite!

By the way, availability in the USA is much better than in Europe. So, if you have a friend in the USA ...

Good luck,
Kai