So there's a lot of interesting gear with availability ratings of 4+. Some of it isn't that expensive. Like, a hacking program: 250¥ and 4(I), or a Mossberg CMDT shotgun: 700¥ and 4(L). These are things I want my PCs to be able to buy with the money they earn for jobs.
The availability rules say for an availability of 4, they either need a contact with Connection 5, or a Matrix Search with a threshold of 4.
Most of my PCs don't have a Charisma of 5, meaning they don't have contacts with Connection of 5, so they won't be going to a contact. I mean, loads of PCs seem to have Charisma 2, meaning their contacts could only ever find gear with an Availability of 1 (!!). It's this weird situation where only the wilderness Shaman has the contacts to procure guns, breaking & entering tools, and hacking programs for the team?
So instead the weapon specialist and street sam will be doing a Matrix Search for their gear. They probably have enough Intuition plus limited Electronics skill to have a chance, given a Browse program or whatever. 4 hits won't be a given before the "keep trying" pool runs out (if buying hits per roll, for instance, the minimum Electronics+Intuition pool is 7 to find Rating 4 gear), but this is as compared to a contact where it's flat out impossible.
This doesn't seem right. I feel like a PC with a cheap commlink and low Electronics skill should be forced to go to a contact instead of the better strategy being to Google for illegal gear. And I feel like it should take longer and cost more to go through a low-Connection contact, rather than just not working. And I guess it doesn't make sense to me that a Weapons Specialist with an Arms Dealer contact can't find arms, but a Talismonger contact totally can because the Shaman has a Charisma stat that matters to their build?
So I'm happy to house rule this, but I'm wondering if there's something I'm missing in the intent of the rules? How are Charisma 2 low-Electronics-skill characters supposed to gear up? (Knowing the Archetypes aren't worth that much, I'll nevertheless note that almost all of them have NO electronics skill and Connection 1-2 contacts, so they won't be procuring any gear, ever. The Decker and Technomancer could Matrix Search, the Rigger might pull it off by defaulting Matrix Search to Intuition-1, and the Street Shaman has a C5 Talismonger, but that's it.)
(There's also the matter that a Shopsoft adds to your Influence test to buy gear... except nowhere does the process of procuring gear mention an Influence test. I would be happy to include one in my house rule for going through the contacts you actually are permitted to have, or to make the Shopsoft add +2 dice to your Matrix Search if going that way.)