Anyone have any issues with precisebits.com?

[Michael Arruda]

Nicholas-

You have a large project that is to be delivered by friday. if it's not at the site by friday for saturday install, the grand opening doesn't happen on monday, everyone loses money- you lose money, future work, etc. A bit breaks at the last minute and you find out your stock of them has dwindled to 0 and nobody in the shop told you; do you want to know who you can trust to get the bit to you on time and in a professional manner? More importantly, don't you want to know who you can't trust to do so?

Those that are not cognisant of the happenings of the past are doomed to repeat them.

-Michael

PS- Dan; I agree the customer is not ALWAYS right. There are just certain instances- in my view, this being one of them- that by not allowing the customer to be right, you sling a lot of egg on your own face. Picking a choosing battles, ya know? We all have to choose how to run our own businesses, but I have a hard spot for bad customer service- it seems true customer service, care, and an understanding that the customer is providing YOU a service by keeping you in business and not the other way around, is a dying art.

[Gene Crain]

[QUOTE=Michael Arruda;1477072]Nicholas-

You have a large project that is to be delivered by friday. if it's not at the site by friday for saturday install, the grand opening doesn't happen on monday, everyone loses money- you lose money, future work, etc. A bit breaks at the last minute and you find out your stock of them has dwindled to 0 and nobody in the shop told you; do you want to know who you can trust to get the bit to you on time and in a professional manner?



...what ??? a broken bit without a few xtra on hand? If the job was that important it seems like you would have more tooling than needed to assure that this little inconvience does not stop you dead in your tracks.

After living where I do for the ammount of time I have with no where to buy these things except online....I always order 3 times the bits I think I might need seeing how there is no next day delivery but 2 weeks...

I also agree with Nick.

discount dash tools dot com is a great supplier for me.

[Michael Arruda]

Gene,

I agree, but sometimes things happen. When they do, you need to know who can save your butt and who will lead you to think they will and leave you high and dry.

-Michael

[Guy Mathews]

[QUOTE=Gene Crain;1477097]

Nicholas-

You have a large project that is to be delivered by friday. if it's not at the site by friday for saturday install, the grand opening doesn't happen on monday, everyone loses money- you lose money, future work, etc. A bit breaks at the last minute and you find out your stock of them has dwindled to 0 and nobody in the shop told you; do you want to know who you can trust to get the bit to you on time and in a professional manner?



...what ??? a broken bit without a few xtra on hand? If the job was that important it seems like you would have more tooling than needed to assure that this little inconvience does not stop you dead in your tracks.

After living where I do for the ammount of time I have with no where to buy these things except online....I always order 3 times the bits I think I might need seeing how there is no next day delivery but 2 weeks...

I also agree with Nick.

discount dash tools dot com is a great supplier for me.

I agree with Nick and Gene.

One other thing, if you discover you are out of bits because of breakage there is always the option of reprogramming with a different bit.

Many of the jobs we did at my old stomping grounds required certain bits, We always built this price into the job for bits. Some times they were not ordered. Rather then Batch and Moan, I would simply reprogram with either a smaller bit or reconfigure the project and carve it which sometimes took longer, but the deadline was met.

When I go to the Ice Cream shop, I expect them to have ice cream. When a cutomer ordered furniture from us, they expected us to have the tools to do the job. On those ocassion something went wrong, we could run to the local lumber store or BBS and get a few router bits or even dremel bits to finish the job.

I am not undermining the experience the OP (original poster) had with this company, but when quoting any job remember the 7 P's.


Just saying..

[Gerry Grzadzinski]

I have one of the first sets of their collets, and to me, the wrench fits perfectly. It's a little tricky using it, but mostly because it's upside down.
If the wrench was looser, and became worn, or caused wear on the nut, you guys would be crying about that.

I personally don't take a lot of stock in these types of threads. Always two sides, and you never really know 100% if either one is correct.

Until this thread, I've heard nothing but good things about this company for years. And with one post, everyone's jumping ship.

[Scott Shepherd]

Gene and Guy, if you must know, this was not caused by a lack of planning on my part. When I quoted the job, I gave a proof of the text on the job. They approved it, I had the 1/8" cutter to make it all happen. However, as customers do, they called a last minute change and wanted a different font. When I toolpathed it, the 1/8" wouldn't get into the legs of the fonts, so I had no tools in hand to accomplish the task. I had to order a 1/16" bit in order to get that to happen.

I had no way of knowing the customer would change the font after they placed the order.

I might remind both of you to think back on when customers have made changes once you have the order. That's a fact of life in manufacturing. I guess I should have told them to take their business elsewhere?

Gerry, there are two sides of the story and both have been told and if you compare them, they are dead close to recounting the exact same story, and one party in question admitted he was a jerk and handled the situation poorly and shouldn't have done so.

So I'm not sure how you take that as not knowing which one was correct. One party said they were wrong. Can't be much clearer than that.

I said in a previous post, I didn't start this thread to trash the company. I hoped I would have been the odd man out. If so, that's fine with me. I just thought I'd ask to see if anyone else had issues or if it were just me. In the process of that, some facts were stated that were not correct and I corrected them, supplying the supporting information. I have no intent on trying to steer people to or away from the company. If you like them and are happy, great! There's about a 1/2 dozen active forums I could have posted this on if my intent was to hurt their reputation or business. I didn't, because that wasn't my intent.

I wish Ron and his company the best. They were there before me and they'll be there after me, so no big loss to them.

[Dan Hintz]

And with one post, everyone's jumping ship.

I don't think that's the case. I think this thread has pulled a few people out of the woodwork that also felt they had a less than desirable experience with PB, but the experience itself wasn't enough of an issue to bother with creating a thread. There may be a few people who have decided not to continue business with PB, just as there are people who will continue to do so because they have been happy so far... that's business.

Despite strong feelings on both sides, these threads serve a purpose, just as the "Company X went out of their way" threads do. I want to know if my favorite company is continuously treating others poorly, just as I want to know if a company that treated me wrong once has a long history of treating people well... second chances are deserved in cases like those.

[Brad Knight]

I'm not taking sides at all, but if I had a grand opening on Monday, and I waited for a Sat install on something mission critical... I don't think that I could blame someone else. If I had a part that was mission critical, and I relied on someone who wasn't responsible enough to handle that responsibility... I don't think I could blame someone else.

I know it's frustrating, I've been on both sides. I've had vendors that failed to get me my product which in turn made me look like a bone head, which puts my customers mission in a bind... and these are multimillion dollar missions that I work with.

That's not to speak in any way of any expectations that were stated or implied, Scott/Steve, if they said they would vs they would try... I don't know and that's between y'all.

But to all of us with customers know that the customer is not always right, and we have to manage expectations as both vendor and customer. I know I try and give myself as much excess time and/or product so that I don't find myself in a bind (I'd much rather be done early and be waiting on someone else than them waiting on me).

Long story short... I might be upset, but I can't blame a vendor because I didn't leave myself a cushion. (7p's)

And I don't think I've ever told a customer to just call someone else... I have threatened to beat the crap out of one or two (that's more customary in the oilfield)

[Dan Hintz]

If I had a grand opening on Monday, and I waited for a Sat install on something mission critical... I don't think that I could blame someone else. If I had a part that was mission critical, and I relied on someone who wasn't responsible enough to handle that responsibility... I don't think I could blame someone else.

You did see the part about Steve's customer making a last-minute change to the project requiring the new bit, right? Steve didn't wait until the last minute, his customer did, and Steve was trying to satisfy the customer. There's nothing Steve could do but rely on the word of someone further down the chain...

[Brad Knight]

I did see that, and I wasn't assigning any fault. My reply was directed more at Michael than Steve.

I drill oil/natural gas wells. I have customers that ask for the moon, yesterday... and I do everything in my power to make sure that I have a spare moon rock or two in reserve, but there are times when I'm at the mercy of my vendors, not unlike Steve w/ Precise Bits.

If my customers make a last minute change, they're the ones that put me in a bind, and I have to, in turn, do what I can to put my vendors in a bind... but as much as I'm not blaming Steve, I can't put the blame on Precise Bits. It's a snowball, and I for one don't blame the guy on the bottom of the hill any more than the guy in the middle. Someone in the chain made decision that a change needed to be made at the last minute and/or didn't leave themselves room to deal with Uncle Murphy. I'm not saying it was Steve any more than Ron.

Now, the 'go find a different vendor'... that's a complete different case and it's not the way I would handle my customer. I would, however, do what I can from both Steve's position and Ron's position to manage expectations. I for one, wouldn't have referred them back to the web site. I would have expedite the order... and as I'm sure most other people do... charged an expediting fee (AKA a pain in the rear fee. I've had to charge thousands of dollars worth of pain in the rear fees when I have to wake up truck drivers in the middle of the night). But... I'm not the owner of Precise Bits and I don't presume to tell other people how to run their business.

[Scott Shepherd]

Brad, keep in mind the issue that started all of this was being told by them one price and being charged another price. It had nothing to do with whether or not they shipped it or didn't ship it or expedited it or anything. The issue was being told one price and charged another. When calling about that is where the rest of the story comes along.

I think it's odd people are picking sides and talking about lack of planning, etc. It had nothing to do with lack of planning. Even if it did, that doesn't enter into the equation of the core issue that was being disputed. You said my cost would be X and you sent me a bill for 2.5 times X.

I seriously doubt any of the "doubters" in this thread would allow someone to tell them one price and charge them 2.5 times more than the quote without saying something about it. It was when saying something about that, that we were told to take our business elsewhere. It had nothing to do with anything other than that and that's a point many are missing in this thread, pointing the blame at me. I didn't do anything. I just asked why you told me one price and charged me another.

If that makes me wrong, then I guess I'll have to be wrong.

[Michael Arruda]

*sigh*

Well, I must be honest with you all. I'm going to be a sell out. After all the statements I've made... I'm going to give precisebits.com a chance. More out of necessity than anything. If you've read my thread about breaking bits, I'm having a bit of a problem with my Makita rf1101 router. Runout at the collet is .003, runout at the collet taper is .0018 or so.

I'd like a spindle, but it's not in the cards. So... only other option on the market... is the PB collets. I just picked up a PC 890 router at HD so I can use their PC collets. I'm hoping it'll take care of my issue.

So, there you have it. I didn't want to speak strong words and come out to be a liar later when I post a thread about how their collets fixed everything, or to the contrary. My hand is forced, I have no other option. These are trying times that take a toll on a man's soul.

Give me accuracy, or give me death.

-Michael

[Dan Hintz]

Michael,

Not to steer you away from PB, but you're aware that they're not the only stop for precision collets, right? Plenty of the other shops sells them... Travers, Grainger, etc. Finding a collet with 0.0002 TIR isn't hard.

[James Leonard]

Dan, I did not know that. I am always looking for second sources. Could you post a link to other precision collets for a PC 690 / 890 or a Bosch Colt? These are the two routers I am / will use use.

Thanks,

-James

[Michael Arruda]

Dan,

I'll look around, but if you could post a link, that would be greatly appreciated- I thought PB was the only manufacturer of precise collets for PC routers. Do they use a standard er20 collet?

Thanks,
Michael