Phunny customers and their (no so) funny antics

Customers are funny, and sometimes they come up with some really entertaining
approaches.....

Couple months back I did a cut-away of a compressor for one of my customers, customers. Something they take to trade shows, it had several sectioned areas
on the crankcase, plus the cylinder head and end covers, oil pump, etc.

All I had, were cartoon sketches of what they sorta wanted if possible.
One of those "figure it out" as you go manual machining jobs.
It was interesting. And it took some thought, machining skill, engineering, setup
and even a fixture for one aspect of the job. I drew on my 30+ years of being
"in the game" to get the job done. Quite a bit of gnawing on cast iron, with some
thick cross sections in the castings. It came out well, and everyone was pleased.

Not much of a way to estimate time, but they insisted on a set price. So I took
a shot in the dark, and came out a little light in the end. I did tell them if I ever do
another, the price will be substantially higher, even tho I have a road map of the
process now.

Fast forward 2 months. Manager comes up to me, and in a very serious tone says
"hey they (their customer) has a division in Australia, and they want one of the cutaway's for down there". And before I could say "Great"! (like it's another one for me to do). he says "they want to do it themselves, so could you write something up, and describe how you did it"?
An.......I'm......like.....WTF??? (In my head)
But I'm just looking around and not saying anything.
And I say "well, hum.....I'm not sure how I'd write that up"
And he says "well, not to give away ALL your trade secrets, but if you can just give
them some idea".....

Yea, right...
Sure......I'll share my job info with YOUR customer.....down in Australia.
I don't believe that for a second. A more believable scenario would be that they
are talking to another local shop and looking for a low price from them. And
the other shop is telling them to find out all they can about how I did the job.
I have no idea if that's the case or what the real story is.
But......I've been at this for many years.
And I didn't get to this point (still in business) by -telling my customers how to do, and how I did their job-.

Hey I know!
Lets call up Kentucky Fired Chicken and ask them for the secret recipe!
See if we get it.....

Reminds me of the George Thorogood song.......where he says
"everybody funny, now you funny too".

No problem. Here's two ways to answer. 1. Send me a check, wait 3 weeks, and there it is, all finished. 2. Michelangelo: just cut away everything that doesn't look like your finished product, and whatever is left will be perfect.



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I had a customer when I first started out that made me jump through so many hoops. They dragged me in for meeting, after meeting. They told me they wanted to discuss pricing, and the contract for the job, etc. They sent me the preliminary contract for $20K+ as the first blanket order, so I was willing to bend over backwards for them, especially just starting out. They ended up basically using me as a free design consultant. Looking back now I probably spent over 100 hours in drive time, and meeting time over the years with this contract. In the end, they decided the price we agreed to and signed the contract for was too high, went out and bought a harbor freight flux core welder (135 amp model, obviously not the 90 amp model!) and welded their galvanized structures together themselves.

I did still make a couple brackets and such for them that they didn't have the capabilities to do, so I heard from their guys the reports of the structures they brought to the trade shows. Apparently all their welds were falling apart and they were just a laughing stock. Then they came and asked me for advice on how to weld better. They had the polarity wrong, and were using solid core wire with no gas thinking it was flux core. I just said keep practicing!

I once had a customer who needed folded sheet metal magazines made for air-powered rifles. They sent me the DXF file for the cut-out, and put the bend lines on the print, but didn't give me final dimensions. I had all the parts laser cut, bent them to spec right on the lines and had them powder coated. Guess they didn't take into account the metal stretches as it's bent so none of the magazines fit. They were in too much of a rush to wait for a sample piece, so all 50 they ordered were wasted. But in the end, it was "my fault" for "making the parts out of spec". I never did get paid for that job...

I had something similar once.

Customer is tied into another supplier who manufactures some of his products and sells strictly through their website. Customer also does stuff on the side, that's where I came in. He was having me design and manufacture his side products.

The other company wanted to take one of the products I designed and manufacture for themselves. I offered to sell the drawings and right to manufacture without any headaches from me.

Never heard from them, I still manufacture those products to this day. Another repeat run shipped from my shop last week.

Just them asking for the process is an insult. But I have no problem taking an insult for the right price, which is why I offered to sell it. My asking price for the product was most likely taken as an insult also, so I guess we're even. I like balance.

Boy, does this sound familiar.
Used to work in a mold shop. Had one customer that was a big name operator. Lots of volume, high dollar molds. They let work out to our biggest customer, to be subbed to smaller shops from there. They developed a habit of sending us a rough sketch of the part, and have us quote a mold for it. But we never seemed to get the bid. Submit the mold design to our customer, always a tad high or something. Once, maybe twice, I can see. But over and over and over? Nah. I smell a rat.
I figure somebody in purchasing had no idea how to mold a part or make the mold, so he sent it out, got the mold design back, handed it to THEIR shop, and wallah, he looks like the best thing since sliced bread, while we are sucking wind. Seems they ALWAYS ended up doing it themselves. After a while, and several attempts, we finally learned to submit a price, but no specifics as to how we would build it. Didn't get us any work, but at least they had to design their own molds. We HAD educated some dildo, but that was the extent of it.
Fast forward a few years. New job. Big thing when I came in was a company wanted about 500 units of our product. Talks continued. Finally settle down to 50. Then 20. Then wanted us to please send then ONE, as a prototype. Company was having all the rest of the mechanism made in China, our product was a clutch to go between the engine and a generator. They wanted a clutch unit to assemble the two, for selling the idea to THEIR customer. Against my better judgement, we sent them ONE unit, TO CHINA no less. You can guess where this all went. Never heard from them again. I'm sure it was dis-assembled upon delivery, reverse engineered, and there went our new orders.
Customers, and the weasels that staff them, can be the scummiest thieves that ever were, if you let em.

I think eventually I would have made a subtle "mistake" in the drawings I sent back to the customer....

i believe some misinformation is required here. make them work for it twice.

The CYA details.....protecting your efforts.
I had one customer years back that "demanded" a drawing with the quote for obsolete parts I was reverse engineering for them.
"You wanna make these parts, you need to submit a "reference" drawing with the quote, as we have nothing and the vendor is long out of business".
Fine.
NO problem.

I will say that there were always two versions of the drawings in my folder. A "quote drawing" and a "production drawing".
And quote drawings were plainly noted as such. "For quoting purposes only".
And "Not to be used to produce actual part".

It's very possible that some......if not all.....of the critical dimensions on the quote drawing might not coincide with the production drawing, or actual measured data.
Been there.
Done that.
Didn't even stay at a Holiday-inn last night.....

As far as I can tell it was never an issue. My parts were my parts. If another guy (shop) got involved, he best do his own homework. I've been burned other times and other places before with PA's having favored buddies winning all the gravy work, and the rest of us getting the shit.
I did have a great run with this particular customer, and they just announced the 90 day layoff notices being distributed. They are closing the plant.
Another "good" (probably about as good as it gets) customer bites it.

gorrilla said:

Boy, does this sound familiar.
Used to work in a mold shop. Had one customer that was a big name operator. Lots of volume, high dollar molds. They let work out to our biggest customer, to be subbed to smaller shops from there. They developed a habit of sending us a rough sketch of the part, and have us quote a mold for it. But we never seemed to get the bid. Submit the mold design to our customer, always a tad high or something. Once, maybe twice, I can see. But over and over and over? Nah. I smell a rat.
I figure somebody in purchasing had no idea how to mold a part or make the mold, so he sent it out, got the mold design back, handed it to THEIR shop, and wallah, he looks like the best thing since sliced bread, while we are sucking wind. Seems they ALWAYS ended up doing it themselves. After a while, and several attempts, we finally learned to submit a price, but no specifics as to how we would build it. Didn't get us any work, but at least they had to design their own molds. We HAD educated some dildo, but that was the extent of it.
Fast forward a few years. New job. Big thing when I came in was a company wanted about 500 units of our product. Talks continued. Finally settle down to 50. Then 20. Then wanted us to please send then ONE, as a prototype. Company was having all the rest of the mechanism made in China, our product was a clutch to go between the engine and a generator. They wanted a clutch unit to assemble the two, for selling the idea to THEIR customer. Against my better judgement, we sent them ONE unit, TO CHINA no less. You can guess where this all went. Never heard from them again. I'm sure it was dis-assembled upon delivery, reverse engineered, and there went our new orders.
Customers, and the weasels that staff them, can be the scummiest thieves that ever were, if you let em.

Click to expand...

Fast forward 2 months. Manager comes up to me, and in a very serious tone says
"hey they (their customer) has a division in Australia, and they want one of the cutaway's for down there". And before I could say "Great"! (like it's another one for me to do). he says "they want to do it themselves, so could you write something up, and describe how you did it"?
An.......I'm......like.....WTF??? (In my head)
But I'm just looking around and not saying anything.
And I say "well, hum.....I'm not sure how I'd write that up"
And he says "well, not to give away ALL your trade secrets, but if you can just give
them some idea".....

Click to expand...

You did take photos of the finished job, right? I always do. I'd print out a couple of the photos, more is better so you can claim completeness and sincerity, then mark them up with a sharpie, having arrows pointing to the areas you worked on with descriptions of "Saw here" Drill here" and "Grind here". That is how you did it, right? Just add competence and skill and imagination and hard work and it's all done.

Mud said:

You did take photos of the finished job, right? .

Click to expand...

I took a lot of pcs all thru the job. My memory is not even what it used to not be.

Now that I've ranted, and cooled off, I've decided if it comes up again, I'm going to coolly ask the question:
"I'm wondering what my incentive is as far as sharing that
information"? I don't care what the answer is coming back, that will be about all I say. Maybe repeat it a couple times.

Hopefully they get the hint.


Funny thing is, the owner of the company is not a guy that does ANYTHING for anybody unless there's maximum gain in it for him.
I'm sure if the tables were turned, his response would be something to the effect of "nice try".

Municipal work.
They need a housing replaced and OEM's too long on leadtime and highly priced.
I am brought in to see what I can do. I figure a way to make much easier, make prototype with cost for several hundred pieces at less then half OEM cost and short leadtime Following week part goes out for bid and my part is what is being bid on...someone came in .5 less and won.

I'd tell them, sure, I can make up instructions, that'll be 200% of what you paid me last time

OK, Same customer, different situation.

They want me to make a run of several special tools (Bearing Puller) that I last made in 2001. They placed several orders before that, usually 10pcs each order.
Now they want a price on 3 and 10. But they already had the PO printed out with the 2001 price. And I said the price WILL be higher from the 2001 price.
Grumbling ensued....
So today I took them a quote, and along with it, a page printed from an online inflation calculator showing the 2001 price, and the 2016 equivalent.
Hard to argue with that.
I included tooling and setup charges in my 2017 price.
All they said, when I told them what the 2001 price was, is "wow, that's what we charged the customer......we'll have to think about this".
What?
Oh, so you were passing these parts along at Zero profit?

I get tired of the games.
I don't think they are concerned if I make a profit or not.
In fact, I'm sure of it.

They don't appreciate you or your knowledge.
Hurts you short run.
Hurts them long run.