Drop shipping and groups/kits/assemblies don't mix, and that's a pity

We want to sell a simple kit, e.g.

Our Happy Kit - orderable from our webstore
- item 1: non-inventory drop-ship resale item, not orderable from our webstore, preferred vendor = Happy Shipper
- item 2: non-inventory drop-ship resale item, not orderable from our webstore, preferred vendor = Happy Shipper

When customers order Our Happy Kit, we would like a PO to go to Happy Shipper that includes both items and the customer's ship to address.

Problem:

- If we use kits, the items are automagically transformed into special order items with our address as the ship-to, and Happy Shipper thinks they need to ship them to us, not our customer. And yes, they have shipped stuff to us before we've been able to yell "stop"! And yes, a consequence of this is that the customer got their order late.