Sort of OT / Things cutomers do that agrevate you

Maybe I'm just getting old, but there are several things that are really starting to make me grumble.

#1
Third part logistics companies doing purchasing and accounts payable. Does nothing but delay everything and ends up costing the customer more for the same product. Things frequently get ordered in duplicate, we constantly have to ask do you want more, or is this a duplicate order?

#2
Customer announcing they are going paperless and will use direct deposit (that's fine) and are going to take a 1% discount on all invoices to do it.

#3
Customer begs for quick delivery, its an emergency. Reschedule work, add overtime, re-quote, bust your hump to do it, 3 weeks later the parts are still sitting on the floor in his office.

#4
Ask for a quote for 4 custom parts, then send a PO for 1 part at the 4 piece price. Why is this such a hard concept to understand, that I can"t make 1 at the same price?

#5
Make engineering changes after the PO is cut and still expect delivery to stay the same.

#6
Pay late.

Rant off. Feel free to add yours.

All of those RJT plus.

#1 Customers who think, if not actually believe the world revolves on their prick.

#2 Customers who think you're hanging on the back of the door just waiting for their call.

#3 Petty beaurocrats whose sole purpose in life is to make, making an honest buck ever harder.

#4 Courier companies that lose parcels, or ''leave them next door'' without telling anyone.

#5 Suppliers who quote one price, invoice another and will NOT sort it out until pinned to the wall.

#6 Local radio and press advertising sales girls, all teeth n tits but no brain cells and a PITA that don't understand, NO THANK YOU!

#7 Local customers who's employees think my shop is a good place to skive off for an hour or two. .. thay are so wrong!

#8 And when I sit down to PM at the end of the day, freshly showered mug of tea and smoke on the go, there's some twat asking Qs a swarf shovellers mate (3rd class) knows the answer too.

I'll have another cuppa n think of a few more.

As long as they pay well and on time and most items pass inspection, I tend to ignore all the other problems.

When I first started off in self employment 20 years ago I had a
wealthy elderly inventor as a customer. We made his money selling construction sized boring bits, but he was always trying to build a better mouse trap. At one time he did hold the 1/4 mile speed
record for an electric car

A typical project he would hand me a box and a rough drawing and say he
wanted this motor attached to this gear box and attach it to this drilling head. I would tell him he would get his prototype in one week.
In two days he would call and ask how it was going. To screw with him I
would answer in a casual mode saying everything was ok, but I think the pizza I had for lunch gave me heartburn. Old man would get angry, start cussing and say he didn't give a hoot about my health problems.

What ever I did he complained about, he was a miserable old man who would
complain if he thought his beer was too cold. He called me twice daily even if I was way ahead of schedule. Every time I dropped something off he looked at it, bitched about something (once he said it was in too big a box). The kicker he told the secretary to cut me a check and never bitched about price, and I was charging him double for R & D work what I would charge others because of the degree of difficulty and his demeanor.

All of I sudden after a year of weekly projects I stopped hearing from him, the business address was vacant I figured he passed away. I wouldn't trade him for a slow paying nice guy any day of the week.

The biggest thing for me is the complete and utter lack of "engineering" that goes into the parts I make. Typically, I get some fucked up Solidworks model that looks kind of like a part. No drawings, no tolerances, no idea how it's supposed to work. Usually its some do-hickey for a guitar/tractor/classic car or boat/gun/other machine that I have never seen and have no understanding of.

Then the customer stands there and wants a price on the spot. This isn't a take out restaurant. I'm going to have to interrogate your POS solid model before I have a clue what it will cost.

Then they want it tomorrow.

Then I have to figure out if that 90 degree sharp inside corner on the milled part is really needed. Or if that .2406 diameter hole is for clearance/for a tap/for a press pin/for a slip fit/in the right place/to the right depth.

Then the part will be .385 thick or something retarded so I have to cut it from .5 material.

Then they'll want it made from stainless at the aluminum price...

Dualkit said:

I would trade him for a slow paying nice guy any day of the week.

Click to expand...

I think it's the first lesson of being in business. If you want to make money, you have deal with the shit customers.

Personally, I don't mind making a little less and taking shit from some PITA company that thinks it runs the world.

[h=2]Things cutomers do that agrevate you[/h]

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They collude!

I don't think that you can convince me that they don't all hang out at the same coffee shop in the early morning - colluding as to when they will place orders. B/c you know as well as I doo that Customer A doesn't want to order parts until they hear that Customer B has ordered parts.


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox

"I wouldn't trade him for a slow paying nice guy any day of the week."

Oops that is what I meant to say about the crusty old geezer. Good check on delivery and never complaining about price bought him a lot of leeway.

In my 35 years in the trade most overly nice people whether they were co-workers, subordinates or customers were lacking in one way or another. The "nice" co-worker was usually the guy who needed help, the nicest of the guys I was supervising usually were trying to brown nose to make up for poor performance and the customer who called you buddy wanted to pay in 120 days and wanted you to stock his commonly ordered items.

1.) How it takes them days or weeks to cut a PO for an order that everybody has agreed on, as far as price and delivery goes.

2.) How on said order you emphasized delivery will be "X" days or weeks AFTER receipt of PO, yet well before "X" days or weeks, they are calling wanting parts. (And remember, this is AFTER they dicked around for days or weeks producing one sheet of paper with the words "Purchase Order" on it.

3.) The feeling of satisfaction telling the new gung-ho buyer that I emphasized the delivery schedule applied after receipt of said PO, and if you want the parts any sooner I will be glad to cancel the PO and you can get them somewhere else. "No hard feelings Mr. Buyer, it's just business."

Priceless...

ToolCat

cnctoolcat said:

1.) How it takes them days or weeks to cut a PO for an order that everybody has agreed on, as far as price and delivery goes.

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I've had this take years...

We've had a few customers that called saying a part or machine they just got from us wasn't right. They need it fixed right now because they already committed to X units of product before they even placed the order for the original item. We say send it back and we'll make it right (standard warranty issue).

A few weeks go by and they call and say they got it fixed via their third party repair man. That's cool, glad they got it going at least.

Another couple weeks and the part/machine shows up on our door-step for repairs to the original issue... And they expect us to pay the third party repair mans bill. Most of the time in this scenario, the problem is worse than when it started by the time it gets to us.

Business is 'fun'.

My biggest gripe has been touched on already.
Guys who figure out how to stumble around in solid-works, and suddenly they are engineers. They are annoying, but will usually admit they don't really know what they are doing.
It is the guys who really are engineers, that have absolutely zero grasp of "machinability" that get me riled up.
I have a project right now for a brand-new customer. He is clue-less. Fair enough, I am not out to insult anybody.
But, don't look at me like I am the idiot when I tell you that $30 part is going to cost $600 because you designed it with a 1.9" deep pocket that has sharp inside corners.

Other than that, the guys that act like you should be waiting for their phone-call. Like you are sitting around surfing porn just waiting on them to bring you work.
"What do you mean 3 weeks?! These are simple, why is it going to take 3 weeks?!" No matter how many times you tell some people they have to get in line, They think they are always at the front. That is probably the most annoying thing I deal with.

I had a call the other day. Parts would have been right up my alley. Stuff I actually have experience with. Of all the local shops, I would have been "the" guy to make this dudes stuff. As soon as I said 2 weeks before I could get started, he all but hung-up on me. I just laughed.

I nix the non/late payers on the first offense. I don't have that problem.

Doug said:

The companies allowed them to pretty much set their own hours. 10:00 AM start was typical.

I prefer starting early so the REAL problem was invariably there'd be questions about the parts once you started setup and the guys weren't in yet. So you sit there with a machine partially setup waiting.

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Why can't you start at 10:00 and work late? Always funny to me that the "early start" guy thinks he works so much harder because he comes in early.

I fought that in the foundry when the old guys wanted to come in at 5:30 and leave at 2:00. Lot's of business happens between 2:00 pm and 5:00 pm...

"Make engineering changes after the PO is cut and still expect delivery to stay the same."

Haaa... but you forgot they want the PRICE to stay the same too...

Mind you we were 99 plus percent on delivery times. My favorite is...Purchasing would call for an update because she has a program update meeting ...and hour later the engineer would call for an update even though he was in that program meeting with the purchasing agent and is going to the engineering meeting. Two hours later the project manager who just got out of the engineering meeting would call...

scadvice said:

"Make engineering changes after the PO is cut and still expect delivery to stay the same."

Haaa... but you forgot they want the PRICE to stay the same too...

Mind you we were 99 plus percent on delivery times. My favorite is...Purchasing would call for an update because she has a program update meeting ...and hour later the engineer would call for an update even though he was in that program meeting with the purchasing agent and is going to the engineering meeting. Two hours later the project manager who just got out of the engineering meeting would call...

Click to expand...

Another variation is a purchasing agent calling a lot of people at a vendor's shop, trying to improve a delivery date/price/etc. Hoping to find one person with no fortitude, to whittle prices and times down.. After a while they learn who the weak links are..

There was some research years ago that indicated the highest performing companies often had a "high conflict, high respect" culture. That is, they argued fiercely about the best ways to do things, but after a decision was made there was so much mutual respect they just got on with things, maybe had a beer together, and started all over again the next day.

Seems some of this might apply to customer/supplier relationships. A bit of conflict may help keep both of you in business. But the baseline should be mutual respect.

I would agree with about everything posted. Lately, my biggest gripe,
Everything is HOT HOT HOT, it's a super rush, we need to drop everything and get this done. The customer needs it tomorrow, blah blah blah.

Then, when the invoice comes due, all of a sudden everything moves like molasses in the winter.

Fucking customers, who need them.

Changing the drawing, but not updating the revision on the drawing.

* I'm guilty of this myself sometimes.

Many years ago now, we had a customer reject a large order of water-jet cut parts for size, location, and finish issues.

Having done the job from CAD to QC myself I was flabbergasted ... and embarrassed.

Then the parts showed up and, though they were the same part, were quite clearly NOT the parts we had cut.

Not the last time I've seen that trick tried ...

Also had another customer that would take delivery, then reject the parts months later and demand rework and/or replacement for issues that we could not find or verify on return of said "rejects".

The last time they tried that the parts had been on their shelf for 2-1/2 years.

We told them NO, and don't ever call us again.

Still another customer, with whom we still do business, regularly sends us part-prints that bear little or no resemblance to the last part we made with that part number.

We're talking dozens of part-prints that never get revisions but the parts change size, hole patterns, hole sizes, profiles, etc., etc.

... and you never know when/if they are going to revert to one of the previous "configurations".

I also forgot to add:

The rush job that has to be on their receiving desk by such and such time, absolutely gotta have it for the assembly at that time, or the project goes under. Two weeks later, I'm hand delivering another one of those rush, rush, gotta have it, jobs so it will get it there on time and see the above mentioned prior rush still sitting in receiving.

I had a customer tell us " as far as I am concerned, I am your only customer".

And what is WORSE, is my boss liked the line so much he now uses it to all our vendors, making us seem like pricks.