a little unhappy.........
- Thread starter Coupefreak
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Coupefreak
New Member
RPM said:Ask them what they do have in stock, as far as an axle with spindles and brakes. They got your money see what they can offer you so you can get this car rolling.
Great idea Ron....Thanks!!
I'll probably hafta wait till the "General Manager" gets back from where ever
Vance
Brucer
New Member
my thoughts on this, i would never wait over 3 weeks for any part.. thats just unacceptable in my book...
in the tool&die trade, if you made a customer wait even 1 week, you'll be lucky to keep that customer in any fashion. in the medical field if you waited 1 week patient would die..
thier selling parts at premium prices, but delivering at less than standard..not a good combination..
i feel for you.
in the tool&die trade, if you made a customer wait even 1 week, you'll be lucky to keep that customer in any fashion. in the medical field if you waited 1 week patient would die..
thier selling parts at premium prices, but delivering at less than standard..not a good combination..
i feel for you.
Brian
New Member
Not my style, but I guess I have no choice but to join in on this one... Problem is that I already know it's a lose/lose situation. Your upset and you have every right to be, we're just as upset as well... Problem here is I understand the human condition. Regardless of the answer and how it's stated, I'm the supplier, your the customer, your right, I'm a liar, etc. I know how it works... Problem is that I am now getting phone calls here from people concerned on what's going on. The problem is that nobody reading any of these posts have the benefit of speaking to us directly or hearing any of the phone calls between you and us or us and our supplier.... Here's what I can say up to this point...
* Yes, I understand your upset and believe me when I agree you have every reason to be. Your upset that you do not have your two spindles for your car, I'm as equally upset that I don't have the 200 spindles here in stock to ship.. Honestly, were both upset, although for slightly different angles. This backorder represents two spindles you need to get your car closer to being on the road. It also represents the dozens I need to finialize the thousands of dollars in sales we can't complete..
* As far as you already paying for these, this is a rare occassion for us as we do not charge for backordered items until they ship to the customer. You had a specific need with using one charge card for the parts and another for the freight. In an effort to not mess up your charge card split payments, you asked us to charge the one card for the parts immediately so we only had to worry about the freight.... In all honesty, would you be any more patient for the parts regardless if you paid for them yet or not? Prepayment is a fact of the situation, but the lack of getting the parts is the real issue. Although your spindles are paid in full, many, many others are currently sold are not.. This represents a revenue that we obviously need to PAY my suppliers for the spindles once I get them.. It's all cash flow, from one hand to another to another... You pay us so we can pay them so they can pay whomever is next in the line. Regardless of the type of business, it's all pretty much identical.....
* I have no idea where the "general manager" thing came from or the Aruba deal.... The owner of the company, went on a Friday-Sunday cruise (3 whole days)... He's the owner, not "general manager".... We have a VP of operations who is in our CT location every day, usually 6 days a week. I have no idea why a 68 year old man going on a 3 day cruise for the first time in his life has ANY bearing on the speed of spindles being completed by a supplier who is NOT Total Performance but a supplier FOR Total Performance.. I don't see any connection to any of that, but it was obviously posted enough times to draw some attention....
Here's the deal in short form folks..... The spindles are made at a foundry that does the work for us. They then have to go to the machine shop that does the VERY extensive amount of machine work for us. While all this is going on, all we can do is make phone calls every couple of days like we do every week. The answer that we get is the answer that we provide. If the information given to us proves to have been incorrect, I have no way of knowing this until THAT time frame promised goes by... I called them again today around noon and was told that the owner was at lunch at that he would call me back... It's 1:44 right now as I'm typing this and I figured I would call again in order to put the most up to date information on this posting, well, he's still at lunch... Yes, an hour and a half lunch... I got nothing to say about this however... I can't get an answer right now, the guys on a REALLY long lunch.. I can't control this fact...
Please don't think I'm upset about this, just trying to convey OUR frustration to this fact as well... It's another business and another person jamming me up. I'm surely not happy about any of this, plus I have the added frustration of knowing my hands are pretty much tied... It comes down to after everything else, "it is what it is"... I just hate doing this on e-mails or bulletin board postings because I can pretty much promise that at least one person is going to take this as I could care less about the situation and am just passing you on... Like I said, no matter what I do or say, I'm going to be wrong... This is why I will take a phone conversation or, even better, a face to face conversation over the Internet any day of the week...
Brian - TP
* Yes, I understand your upset and believe me when I agree you have every reason to be. Your upset that you do not have your two spindles for your car, I'm as equally upset that I don't have the 200 spindles here in stock to ship.. Honestly, were both upset, although for slightly different angles. This backorder represents two spindles you need to get your car closer to being on the road. It also represents the dozens I need to finialize the thousands of dollars in sales we can't complete..
* As far as you already paying for these, this is a rare occassion for us as we do not charge for backordered items until they ship to the customer. You had a specific need with using one charge card for the parts and another for the freight. In an effort to not mess up your charge card split payments, you asked us to charge the one card for the parts immediately so we only had to worry about the freight.... In all honesty, would you be any more patient for the parts regardless if you paid for them yet or not? Prepayment is a fact of the situation, but the lack of getting the parts is the real issue. Although your spindles are paid in full, many, many others are currently sold are not.. This represents a revenue that we obviously need to PAY my suppliers for the spindles once I get them.. It's all cash flow, from one hand to another to another... You pay us so we can pay them so they can pay whomever is next in the line. Regardless of the type of business, it's all pretty much identical.....
* I have no idea where the "general manager" thing came from or the Aruba deal.... The owner of the company, went on a Friday-Sunday cruise (3 whole days)... He's the owner, not "general manager".... We have a VP of operations who is in our CT location every day, usually 6 days a week. I have no idea why a 68 year old man going on a 3 day cruise for the first time in his life has ANY bearing on the speed of spindles being completed by a supplier who is NOT Total Performance but a supplier FOR Total Performance.. I don't see any connection to any of that, but it was obviously posted enough times to draw some attention....
Here's the deal in short form folks..... The spindles are made at a foundry that does the work for us. They then have to go to the machine shop that does the VERY extensive amount of machine work for us. While all this is going on, all we can do is make phone calls every couple of days like we do every week. The answer that we get is the answer that we provide. If the information given to us proves to have been incorrect, I have no way of knowing this until THAT time frame promised goes by... I called them again today around noon and was told that the owner was at lunch at that he would call me back... It's 1:44 right now as I'm typing this and I figured I would call again in order to put the most up to date information on this posting, well, he's still at lunch... Yes, an hour and a half lunch... I got nothing to say about this however... I can't get an answer right now, the guys on a REALLY long lunch.. I can't control this fact...
Please don't think I'm upset about this, just trying to convey OUR frustration to this fact as well... It's another business and another person jamming me up. I'm surely not happy about any of this, plus I have the added frustration of knowing my hands are pretty much tied... It comes down to after everything else, "it is what it is"... I just hate doing this on e-mails or bulletin board postings because I can pretty much promise that at least one person is going to take this as I could care less about the situation and am just passing you on... Like I said, no matter what I do or say, I'm going to be wrong... This is why I will take a phone conversation or, even better, a face to face conversation over the Internet any day of the week...
Brian - TP
Coupefreak
New Member
Brian.....thanks for the reply. I understand the supplier issues, I never intended for this to snow ball. I apologize if I have in any way offended.
I never called you a liar. the few times I have talked to you, you have been very helpful. hopefully we can get this behind us.
Vance
I never called you a liar. the few times I have talked to you, you have been very helpful. hopefully we can get this behind us.
Vance
Brian
New Member
Not a problem at all!!! It's just R-E-A-L-L-Y hard to maintain your composier when you want to strangle your supplier. I get nuts when someone else drops the ball and we're the ones that look like a bunch of morons...
Actually, I can't put the entire blame on the machine shop by any stretch of the imagination here though... The foundry is really where this one got dropped. They were about a month late on the first batch and when we got them in, they were almost all bad and we had to reject them. Obviously, they had to start all over again, which really became the problem. By the time the machine shop got their hands on them, we were already over 2 months behind. I can't really blame them on this one, but they are being a bit slow on their end as well.
By the way. 4:32 and no call back yet.........
Brian
Actually, I can't put the entire blame on the machine shop by any stretch of the imagination here though... The foundry is really where this one got dropped. They were about a month late on the first batch and when we got them in, they were almost all bad and we had to reject them. Obviously, they had to start all over again, which really became the problem. By the time the machine shop got their hands on them, we were already over 2 months behind. I can't really blame them on this one, but they are being a bit slow on their end as well.
By the way. 4:32 and no call back yet.........
Brian
Duke
Member
Brian, it isn't you or TP. The problem is you just happen to be the poor sap that is stuck in the middle and the people who recieved our order. Believe me you are not the only company having supplier problems. Lately I have noticed some strange things like two weeks to put a piece of flat glass in a windshield, or the painter having my body for a month and still not done ( not much to do just slow ). Parts I have ordered from say Summit or Jegs have come in the right box with part number right but inside the box - wrong part. I had to return a torgue converter five times to get the right one. That was B&M finally cancelled and got a different brand, that wasn't Summits fault, but they are the ones that ended up looking bad. There is something happening deep down in our work force, I have an opinion but that would really piss people off so I will Shut up. Hang in there.
Coupefreak
New Member
I do understand Brian....I know its not you, or TP. I guess I was just in one of those moods.....it just seems that when I do call, one person tells me one thing, then I call back a couple weeks later, and get a different story from a different person.
please accept my apology, I probably shouldn't have brought up my frustration in a public forum.:woops::sorry:
p.s I just spoke with Pete.
Vance
please accept my apology, I probably shouldn't have brought up my frustration in a public forum.
:woops::sorry:p.s I just spoke with Pete.
Vance
Brian
New Member
Thanks guys!! It does mean a lot!!!
It's certainly bad all around.. I really don't like to admit it, but there's a lot of problems going on it this country right now and it's really starting to compound to everything. I worry that a lot of people and a lot of businesses are going to be hurt very badly... One huge eye-opener for me was all the Disney stores in all the malls up here packed it up.. How bad do things have to get for DISNEY to start closing up shop?! Between what we have going on in this country and so many jobs getting moved to India and the like, it's starting to catch up with everyone.
As far as when anyone calls in, you all certainly have my permission to talk directly to me and me only... For as tough as it is to call and get a status when we are getting the status from an outside supplier, it doesn't help when you talk to someone different here every time. At least if you get the same guy every time, you can at least say, what the hell when the answer changes a couple of weeks later. It's hard to discuss a conversation that you were not party to... I honestly have no way of knowing what others are giving for answers. I can only assume that the answers were at least true at the time they were provided...
So!!... Changing tracks here.... anyone going to Springfield, IL next week?
It's certainly bad all around.. I really don't like to admit it, but there's a lot of problems going on it this country right now and it's really starting to compound to everything. I worry that a lot of people and a lot of businesses are going to be hurt very badly... One huge eye-opener for me was all the Disney stores in all the malls up here packed it up.. How bad do things have to get for DISNEY to start closing up shop?! Between what we have going on in this country and so many jobs getting moved to India and the like, it's starting to catch up with everyone.
As far as when anyone calls in, you all certainly have my permission to talk directly to me and me only... For as tough as it is to call and get a status when we are getting the status from an outside supplier, it doesn't help when you talk to someone different here every time. At least if you get the same guy every time, you can at least say, what the hell when the answer changes a couple of weeks later. It's hard to discuss a conversation that you were not party to... I honestly have no way of knowing what others are giving for answers. I can only assume that the answers were at least true at the time they were provided...
So!!... Changing tracks here.... anyone going to Springfield, IL next week?
Coupefreak
New Member
With the cost of gas, etc. now.......I won't be making Springfield.
probably won't make NSRA in Pueblo either
looks like the only show I'll get to this year is in Scott City KS. I'll make that one, only because its the same weekend as My Moms birthday, and she live in Scott city:lol:
hang in the Brian, it's all good.
Vance
probably won't make NSRA in Pueblo either
looks like the only show I'll get to this year is in Scott City KS. I'll make that one, only because its the same weekend as My Moms birthday, and she live in Scott city:lol:
hang in the Brian, it's all good.
Vance
Coupefreak
New Member
Duke said:
you are absolutely right......however......I'm in TX.......they are in CT......there is still a language barrier:lol::laff:
I don't speak "Yankee", and they have trouble understanding "Texican":think:
Vance
tfeverfred
Well-Known Member
Thanks for chiming in Brian. It means a lot that you would address this issue and I really hope things get better for all parties involved.
Things in this country are going to have to change and change soon. I have noticed some of my customers are almost in a panic. I do the shipping for where I work and while I don't have to ship the same day, I usually do. I think it means a lot to them because I know what it means to me to get my stuff in a fair amount of time. As for back orders, our stuff is manufactured in Italy. Our large shipments come in by boat. Even if Italy ships on time, it can take 2 months for the ship to get here and then, it will sit for 3 to 4 days on custom holds. All thanks to 9-11. Last year, we waited for 2 months to get a shipment and when we got it, some of the stuff we needed badly was wrong. Bros, I wouldn't wish the phone calls I got on anyone.
So, please hang in there fellas.
As for me driving anywhere over 250 miles from home, that ain't gonna happen for a while. On that note, last week I saw an economic guy on the news, that said he has a solution for people who are having a hard time with gas prices. He says we just need to make more money so we can pay for it. The sad part is, I actually think he may be right. Gas prices went up about 25%, so we all need a 25% raise. I'm going to wait a while before I ask my boss.
Things in this country are going to have to change and change soon. I have noticed some of my customers are almost in a panic. I do the shipping for where I work and while I don't have to ship the same day, I usually do. I think it means a lot to them because I know what it means to me to get my stuff in a fair amount of time. As for back orders, our stuff is manufactured in Italy. Our large shipments come in by boat. Even if Italy ships on time, it can take 2 months for the ship to get here and then, it will sit for 3 to 4 days on custom holds. All thanks to 9-11. Last year, we waited for 2 months to get a shipment and when we got it, some of the stuff we needed badly was wrong. Bros, I wouldn't wish the phone calls I got on anyone.
So, please hang in there fellas.
As for me driving anywhere over 250 miles from home, that ain't gonna happen for a while. On that note, last week I saw an economic guy on the news, that said he has a solution for people who are having a hard time with gas prices. He says we just need to make more money so we can pay for it. The sad part is, I actually think he may be right. Gas prices went up about 25%, so we all need a 25% raise. I'm going to wait a while before I ask my boss.
Brian
New Member
Just so you all know, I received a phone call about an hour ago from the owner of the machine shop... He appologized and stated he wasn't hiding from me on purpose, but he was doing some running around yesterday and one thing led to another, etc.. I can relate unfortunately....
Anyways, the spindles are indeed still in process and he expects to have at least 30 of the spindles completed and in my hands next Wednesday (not tomorrow)... We'll distribute these immediately to the people waiting on plain spindles.. Remember, for anyone waiting on chrome spindles, I'll still need to send them out FOR chrome.. Vance, I'm almost 100% positive you have plain on order with us, correct? My computer is having an attitude towards me right now from a Photoshop job that crashed it, so I can't look up your order at this moment...
Also, thanks for the kind words about me personally! Trust me when I say none of you know just how important that is to me... Integrity is first and formost in my books plus I'm not really smart enough to remember my lies, so I don't bother trying.. LOL :razz:
As far as asking Mickey for a raise, I think I'll at least wait until we get these spindles shipped out and get the cash flow from them..
Thanks again ya-all!! (I can speak a couple words of Texican..:lol
Brian
Anyways, the spindles are indeed still in process and he expects to have at least 30 of the spindles completed and in my hands next Wednesday (not tomorrow)... We'll distribute these immediately to the people waiting on plain spindles.. Remember, for anyone waiting on chrome spindles, I'll still need to send them out FOR chrome.. Vance, I'm almost 100% positive you have plain on order with us, correct? My computer is having an attitude towards me right now from a Photoshop job that crashed it, so I can't look up your order at this moment...
Also, thanks for the kind words about me personally! Trust me when I say none of you know just how important that is to me... Integrity is first and formost in my books plus I'm not really smart enough to remember my lies, so I don't bother trying.. LOL :razz:
As far as asking Mickey for a raise, I think I'll at least wait until we get these spindles shipped out and get the cash flow from them..
Thanks again ya-all!! (I can speak a couple words of Texican..:lol
Brian
Coupefreak
New Member
Thanks for the update Brian.....I appreciate it.
yes, I have the plain ones ordered......don't tell me you had chrome ones in stock.......I'll come to CT and hunt you down:lol::lol:
since you speak "Texican" y'all are stand -up folks, not all hat and no cattle
cool, so now I can look forward to "puttin some lipstick on this pig" right??
Thanks again Brian
Vance
yes, I have the plain ones ordered......don't tell me you had chrome ones in stock.......I'll come to CT and hunt you down
:lol::lol:since you speak "Texican" y'all are stand -up folks, not all hat and no cattle
cool, so now I can look forward to "puttin some lipstick on this pig" right??
Thanks again Brian
Vance
donsrods
Member
Brian, I think it speaks very highly of you that you would come on and explain the circumstances so that we all understand what has happened. I worked for manufacturers and dealers during my life, and know how a supplier can slow down your ability to deliver.
We Americans have been spoiled (me included), we have become so accustomed to stores and dealers having tons of inventory on hand that we expect immediate shipment. Times are changing though. Every company is trying to stay afloat by cutting costs and increasing productivity. No longer can they afford to have a years supply of some item sitting on the shelf, it would put them out of business in a hurry.
I dealt with some of the biggest names in the marine industry like Mercruiser, Volvo, etc and time after time parts we needed were on "National Backorder." It is very hard to explain to a customer who is waiting for a warranty part that he is owed that none exist anywhere in the country. We had one part where the dies that made the part broke and it was almost a year before we could get that part again.
Plus, your suppliers are having the same issues you are and are trying to control costs, so they may only run certain products at certain times. They just want to stay solvent too.
Times have changed, and we Americans are going to have to learn to be more patient than in years past I'm afraid.
Don
We Americans have been spoiled (me included), we have become so accustomed to stores and dealers having tons of inventory on hand that we expect immediate shipment. Times are changing though. Every company is trying to stay afloat by cutting costs and increasing productivity. No longer can they afford to have a years supply of some item sitting on the shelf, it would put them out of business in a hurry.
I dealt with some of the biggest names in the marine industry like Mercruiser, Volvo, etc and time after time parts we needed were on "National Backorder." It is very hard to explain to a customer who is waiting for a warranty part that he is owed that none exist anywhere in the country. We had one part where the dies that made the part broke and it was almost a year before we could get that part again.
Plus, your suppliers are having the same issues you are and are trying to control costs, so they may only run certain products at certain times. They just want to stay solvent too.
Times have changed, and we Americans are going to have to learn to be more patient than in years past I'm afraid.
Don
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