What Supplier Nonsense are You Dealing With Today?

[cnctoolcat]

I remember the time we purchased 45K pounds of one size and type of steel from Eaton in Detroit. They arrange for flatbed shipping to Virginia. Our only stipulation on the PO was the steel had to be in 4-bar bundles---mentioned it verbally and in writing.

You guessed it, the truck shows up at the Cathouse with 3 massive bundles of steel, probably 50 bars each!

After much back-and-forth, Eaton had to pay the trucker to bring it back to Detroit for proper bundling. I remember it did screw the trucker's haul plans up for the week, he said.

We do have a Ryerson warehouse 60 miles away, and they offered to pick the steel and re-bundle, for a fee. But Eaton must not have liked the quote, as they paid for a lot of extra trucking!

Fortunately we weren't out of steel, as it took over a week to get our steel back from up north.

ToolCat

 

[Ox]

40' bars?


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I am Ox and I approve this post!

 

[rjwalker1973]

One of the sites we use besides MSC is Alternatives for Industry. Went to go make a drill order because we get the YG1 drills pretty cheap from there and find they have been hacked again and the site is down. Oh well go to DGI and see what they got.

https://www.afi-tools.com/

 

[TeachMePlease]

One of the sites we use besides MSC is Alternatives for Industry. Went to go make a drill order because we get the YG1 drills pretty cheap from there and find they have been hacked again and the site is down. Oh well go to DGI and see what they got.

https://www.afi-tools.com/

Even when they're down, you can call AFI and make a PO over the phone.

 

[???]

On anodisers, every one I spoke to said they went into business because their work got buggered up by their anodiser. Now they do it to us. I ship all my anodising to a business run by two ladies about 800 km’s away. Company I know ships all product to the US for anodising, medical work that he’s charging a fortune for so he can probably afford it.

Aluminium supplier came up with this crock about me double checking their quotes, printing, signing, scanning and sending them back, I said I send you a list, you send me a quote and I confirm it via email. They said it’s company policy so I said it’s my company policy not to buy from you. They recently called and asked if they could call in so I asked if their policy had changed, they said no so I said don’t bother calling in.

Our big problem is no one stocks bar other than really basic sizes in Australia. I need 1”x1/4” 6061 they can only supply 1” square. Hex, sorry we don’t stock it so I’m machining hex shapes on the lathe. They will offer to cut the equivalent bar out of plate but the cut isn’t parallel so you can’t grab two pieces in the vice. Thin stuff they blank from sheet and the cut is so bad the material is all bent.

 

[cnctoolcat]

40' bars?


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I am Ox and I approve this post!

24' bars, but 2-3/8" is still 360 pounds per stick.

We can cut 4 bars at a time on the Amada HA250 (250mm, 10" wide cut). That's why we spec 4 bar bundles, even if we have to pay a tad bit more.

I don't like my guys dancing with the steel outside, cutting the banding on a large bundle, trying to get smaller bundles to bring in. It's too clumsy and dangerous (for us).

ToolCat

 

[jatt]

After sending my freight through my nominated carrier successfully for years, suddenly deciding that they would no longer do this. Can get onto my nominated courier easily, intecept it if I'm in hurry etc.... so user friendly.
In my part of the world many of the larger freight mobs forward onto smaller operators for the 'last mile' delivery. So it can be a bit of guessing game to track my stuff, should it not arrive within a reasonable amount of time. Being out of town a few miles, not all will deliver, and of course no idea that they are simply sitting on it. Lots of time wasted and so on....

Trying to get through to some suppliers that I want my phone number added to the outside sticker has been hit and miss.

 

[rjwalker1973]

Even when they're down, you can call AFI and make a PO over the phone.

If I know the order number/part number, I do for some of our most common tooling.

 

[604Pook]

Have had some suppliers, who we had dealt with for years, slowly creep up their pricing on us usually after our long time salesmen retired . After doing business with them for many years, you assume your getting a good price. Always pays to shop around to keep them honest.

Local paint chain sold us a 5 gallon can of lacquer thinner, have an account, have had one for years. New salesmen set the pricing for our account... was $265 canadian. My guess they hope you just come pick stuff up and don't look at pricing until the end of the month when you pay your bill.

Local auto parts store we have deal with forever, off the street price was $135 for 5 gallons.

 

[Orange Vise]

You guessed it, the truck shows up at the Cathouse with 3 massive bundles of steel, probably 50 bars each!

After much back-and-forth, Eaton had to pay the trucker to bring it back to Detroit for proper bundling. I remember it did screw the trucker's haul plans up for the week, he said.

Can't help but chuckle a little that the driver just assumed you would have a 20K lift.

Not totally surprising though. The driver who delivered our Fanuc robot (300 lbs) didn't know how to use a pallet jack. He kept lifting the pallet behind it. I had to climb in the trailer and take over.

 

[PDW]

After sending my freight through my nominated carrier successfully for years, suddenly deciding that they would no longer do this. Can get onto my nominated courier easily, intecept it if I'm in hurry etc.... so user friendly.
In my part of the world many of the larger freight mobs forward onto smaller operators for the 'last mile' delivery. So it can be a bit of guessing game to track my stuff, should it not arrive within a reasonable amount of time. Being out of town a few miles, not all will deliver, and of course no idea that they are simply sitting on it. Lots of time wasted and so on....

Trying to get through to some suppliers that I want my phone number added to the outside sticker has been hit and miss.

Living in southern Tasmania, I know EXACTLY what you're saying!

PDW

 

[PDW]

Have had some suppliers, who we had dealt with for years, slowly creep up their pricing on us usually after our long time salesmen retired . After doing business with them for many years, you assume your getting a good price. Always pays to shop around to keep them honest.

Local paint chain sold us a 5 gallon can of lacquer thinner, have an account, have had one for years. New salesmen set the pricing for our account... was $265 canadian. My guess they hope you just come pick stuff up and don't look at pricing until the end of the month when you pay your bill.

Local auto parts store we have deal with forever, off the street price was $135 for 5 gallons.

What I don't understand about this shit is, surely they have to realise that they're poisoning a business relationship. There's a company I basically refuse to deal with unless I'm truly desperate because they do this shit - have a price for the suckers and another one if you make a fuss. Fuck that, I don't have the time or patience to call in advance every time to get a quote on something or an argument at the counter until the manager comes back with the price I SHOULD have gotten the first time.

FKT

 

[jatt]

Yeah PDW you really do have to monitor prices like like a damned hawk. What I'm finding with some of my suppliers is they are moving into fancy new digs Southeast of Melbourne (Dandenong direction). For our friends from abroad Melb is like ~4 million folk, and Dandenong is around a bay from said port! Prob costing em more to operate . What has got me buggered is it's a fair distance from the port, like the other side of the city. Most of their stuff is coming in from abroad Anyhoo maybe I'm wrong, but thats my take on it.

 

[Rob L]

Both suppliers are fairly large - one is part of a national group specialising in copper alloys etc the other is allegedly the UK's largest supplier of non ferrous.

Yup, the length issue could have been sorted easily at goods in. I must confess, they're usually pretty good so I check the cast numbers match, stamp it up and put it on the rack.

Does the second one happen to start with an 'Aa' and have a 'co' in it's name?

If so I use said supplier for most of my alu bar, there is one person in the office who I always try to get to sort my orders out as she basically always gets it right but otherwise it's generally the wrong grade delivered in the wrong quantity at the wrong time.

The usual person was off on her holidays once so the branch manager ended up doing my order, I wanted alu that is always stocked in 3 meter lengths but he quoted for 4 meter lengths, I questioned it at the time of ordering and he said they normally had it in 3 meters but sometimes 4 meters and that's what they currently had.

Anyway, truck rolls up and as I always do now before any of the material moved I looked at the paperwork and look at the material and shock of all shocks what they'd sent me was the right material but they'd sent me 3 meter lengths not 4 meters so the delivery was short by 25%.

The other size bar I ordered was in 4 meter lengths but it was the different grade that always comes in that, when I asked they said the grade I asked for was out of stock in the UK so they decided to send the other they did have! If they'd had the right grade in they'd have been 25% short on that too. Luckily it was for one of my own products where either grade is fine and they had charged for the grade they sent but how they think that would be acceptable for any sub contract shop to just swap the grade is mind boggling, it's the material equivalent of Tesco giving you own brand baked beans instead of Heinz when you do an online order.

Now anodising, that's another thing, my local anodiser is actually pretty decent and they repack parts how I hand them over and often with extra packaging but some parts obviously get dropped and dinged which is annoying, but also expected as they tend to be small slippy buggers. Still, taking anything to be anodised always makes me nervous, I take a lot of care to keep parts clean and ding free but that can all be undone with the anodising.

 

[Sam I]

Does the second one happen to start with an 'Aa' and have a 'co' in it's name?

This kind of mishap is unfortunately not limited to the two suppliers I'd mentioned - they were just the ones I was dealing with at the time. As such I'm not going to name anyone publicly but if you're desperate to know then drop me a PM.

I agree though, they shouldn't be substituting anything without prior approval. It does frustrate me when you ask for a quote of Grade A material and they quote Grade B but don't mention it and leave it to you catch it. I usually do but it's slipped past a few times and I've only caught it when I review the certs. You would think they'd pop something on the quote like "we don't have X in stock so we're offering Y" so it's obvious. I'm pretty sure if I tried that with my customers they'd reject the parts and refuse to pay until they'd been re-made.

 

[Rob L]

One thing I've been caught out with that supplier is ordering 3 meter bars and not getting 3 meter bars, more 2.8 meters, unfortunately when that happened I noticed far too late. Now when delivery comes I'm there with a tape measure, if they're quoting and charging for a 3 meter bar I want a 3 meter bar.

To be fair I think everyone in the UK machining sector knows who's good and bad at this point unless they have just got in to it, I once had a truck driver tell me that he swears they collect more material from another shop close to me than they deliver because they're always sending the wrong stuff.

I get that mistakes happen and the more staff anyone employs the chances of having a bad person increases but some of these suppliers are consistently bad unless you work out who the good person there is, the bad person should be the exception and it often just doesn't seem to be the case.

 

[CarrollJamieson]

Todays fun has revolved around tolerances. Why do vendors upsell more what they can actually hit? Ask a vendor what their laser table can realistically hold on 1/4" steel plate dimensionally on the average day with an average operator. I get 0.002" as a response. Problem is, I worked a lot with other companies that would produce laser cut parts. They all seemed to say 0.010-0.020 absolute minimum. On average 0.030 was about the minimum I could give them when I measured their parts.

Am I the only one who thinks hitting 0.002" on a laser cut plate is completely unachievable in the average job shop? I feel like someone listened a little too closely to the sales rep without actually validating that first.

 

[Sam I]

Todays fun has revolved around tolerances. Why do vendors upsell more what they can actually hit? Ask a vendor what their laser table can realistically hold on 1/4" steel plate dimensionally on the average day with an average operator. I get 0.002" as a response. Problem is, I worked a lot with other companies that would produce laser cut parts. They all seemed to say 0.010-0.020 absolute minimum. On average 0.030 was about the minimum I could give them when I measured their parts.

Am I the only one who thinks hitting 0.002" on a laser cut plate is completely unachievable in the average job shop? I feel like someone listened a little too closely to the sales rep without actually validating that first.

Yea, I've been quoted +/- .1 mm before but most state +/-.25 mm. Even then I've noticed because of where the cut is started usually has a little pip if you need clearance for say a bolt then it can sometimes require a bit of rework to get it running right.

I've seen a few of my customers put a silly tolerance on a hole location from a burnt edge before which I'm not a fan of.

 

[604Pook]

I am working on a new small product, I needed to get a rough price for raw material. I requested a quote from one of our regular suppliers, typically i mention it will be part of a larger order, which I always try and make a big of an order as possible, Everywhere seems to have new sales people, lots of retirements etc last few years...current sales guy must of not wanted to quote the price for just one length as if it was part of a larger order in the future.

He quoted me just over double the price of a walk in, cut for anyone metal supplier thats sells retail quoted me, and added a $90 fuel and handling surcharge.

We spend tens of thousands with these people yearly. I know not hundreds of thousands but still. I just needed a price if it was part of a $1000 or more order which is what we typically do.

 

[Donkey Hotey]

He quoted me just over double the price of a walk in, cut for anyone metal supplier thats sells retail quoted me, and added a $90 fuel and handling surcharge.

I have had the same experience down here between McMaster and one of the metal suppliers. Worse, both being in Los Angeles, means they really are competing directly. I bid a job with McMaster pricing and then give the metal supply a chance to beat it. It usually goes to McMaster. Dealing with a second order isn't worth it for a few dollars savings.

They also have a showroom with various materials cut into smaller, consumer-friendly sizes and stocked on racks. I'm standing at the counter with the racks 20 feet behind me and the guy will quote full sticks for more than it costs to just go back and grab 40 bars, in nice, 3-foot, lathe-friendly sizes and check out. Then they'll go, "Oh, uhh..." and then the price is suddenly some marginally lower amount.