Jumping through hoops

[Scott Shepherd]

I've been a this for about 10 years now and I've seen a lot of changes in the business in these short 10 years, but lately, in my opinion, the level of expectations had gone bananas. The amount of phone calls we get on Friday afternoons has blown up. And the after hours calls has too. People have no problem calling at 7:45 at night and not leaving a message, but they will call back repeatedly, minutes apart.

We quoted a job the first week of April. The guy said "This entire job has to be done by the end of April, know that when you quote it. If you can't do it by then, don't quote it". I quoted it. Didn't hear a word. Calls on the 26th of the month "Hey, I'm sending the PO to you for that job and we're heading that way to bring you the items now". Of course, it's about 90 hours worth of work.

Seriously?

Last Friday afternoon, a customer leaves 10 cases of product at our back door without us knowing. Someone went to take the trash out and couldn't open the door. I came in Saturday to an email about it with the file. Needs them by Tuesday. I look at the items and the files. It's 43 hours of work. No notice, no nothing, just drop them off and email.

Had a guy come in yesterday, had items he wanted engraved. Keeping in mind, this is Friday. He said "I need them no later than Tuesday". I had to laugh inside as he walked out the door and said "Have a nice weekend". I thought to myself "What weekend? I'll be working on your items to get them to you by Tuesday".

In 10 years, I've never seen it like this.

My favorite (sarcasm) are the "No hurry, just whenever you get to it, it's not for any event" customers who promptly walk out the door and start to call 4 hours later, repeatedly until you finally do their job.

One thing I will say is that my hopes and beliefs have always been that if you help someone out in their time of need, it'll eventually pay off. Well, 10 years later, I'm still waiting for that one job where I stayed late or worked the weekend to turn into some monster contract. Hasn't happened yet. What I have done is give up 100's of my weekends for it. I'm rethinking my philosophy on that "it'll pay off" theory

[Dave Sheldrake]

Believe me Scotty, it doesn't matter how many lasers you have or how long you have been doing it it's no different for us either

My take? there are so many hobby monkeys buying K40's and running them in their spare time at cut price rates who will do that kind of work that buyers in general expect everybody else to do it lately.

"But they will do it for $5 an item"

Good...get them to do it then because I'm not

[Matt McCoy]

Steve: I see this too and chatting with peers, the perception is that expectations are rapidly changing to the Amazon Prime standard. We are all getting spoiled by getting whatever we want, when we want it, and at the lowest price possible. Great for consumers, hard for businesses. It can be a difficult situation when customers mistakenly or purposefully miss stated lead times.

I'm sure you have a rush fee, but it still stinks having to cancel weekend and evening plans to accommodate.

[Chuck Phillips]

I turn this kind of work down all the time. Give them your estimate of lead time and price and stand on it. 8 years in business now, no regrets. Take care of yourself and your family first.

[Scott Shepherd]

Interesting Dave. I don't know the cause here. Not sure if it's related to cheap lasers or not. I had a guy drop a sample off and ask me if I could do it. I said "Sure". He left it and later brought me the material. He said "no hurry, just shoot me a quote when you have time". Apparently "No hurry" didn't mean "No hurry" because he showed up shortly after that, with no notice and said "Apparently you have too much to do, so I'll find someone else".

Well, okay. I guess "No Hurry" meant "No hurry, as long as it's tomorrow". I'm thinking "Shoot, we failed that customer".

3 weeks later, he walks in the door, totally unannounced, with stacks of parts. "I need these engraved when you have time".

Seems like the market here is just overloaded with work and people with poor planning skills

[Kev Williams]

Gee, it's not only me??

For like five Fridays in a row thru Feb and March, one of my top 5 customers of over 30 years, has dropped 1500 to 2000 some-odd dollar jobs off after 6pm and said "I'll pick these up on my way to work Monday morning!"

Well, whaddya do? The reason for this was one of THEIR best customers was threatening to pull the plug because of being 6 weeks late on a large order, the reason for so late was MY customer couldn't get the materials they needed to make the parts....what is it that runs downhill?? The problem is, money doesn't -- If my customer loses that account, I lose an ongoing job that's into the $400 per machine hour territory. Things are now back to normal on that job, sorta- I have 24 more units being dropped off next Wed that they want Friday, each unit is 2 pieces about 15" x 20" x 5" with 6 sides to be engraved, so in essence it's actually 144 parts. But at least I'll get it during the actual work week!

That's next week- Yesterday, after 4pm, I got TWO Monday morning jobs, one a gold plated Invicta for a BYU basketball player who already has his own logo, the second was a frantic phone call from a guy in Florida who is 'going to be sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars!!' if he can't produce some long overdue keypads by end of day Monday. The overnight pack just got here 1/2 hour ago, I have to engrave buttons for the keypads, then overnight them back Monday...

But boating season is here, and now it's time to say NO!! to these weekend jobs! (yeah, right-- )

Most of my regulars try their best to give me time, which I appreciate. But something has to give...Just yesterday I put my website back up, it essentially says I'm no longer going to take on jewelry, awards or other personalization type engraving, simply too busy with the industrial stuff.

[John Lifer]

I need some of your work
Well, One thing to do that would counter at least some of it is to have a weekend/overnight rate. About a 50% upcharge for rush jobs. Yeah, I know that if it is a regular customer, that isn't happening, but you can't run 24-7 all the time unless you are set up that way. Or just don't accept the work.

Funny, I had a small job for my fiber the other day. Guy dropped it off Friday afternoon, and said, no hurry. I though, Sure, you'll be calling Monday morning to pick up.
So having time, I ran it Saturday. Called him Monday afternoon, oh, sure I'll pick up Tuesday afternoon, really wasn't any hurry. Surprised me!.

[Kev Williams]

"I need some of your work" -- I'm just about ready to take that offer!

-- the beginning of last month one of my ski lift mfr's ordered 49 operator panels, which I build from scratch. They only ordered like 60 panels all of last year. I'm about half done with this current order, still waiting my sheet metal shop to finish up my aluminum needed to finish it. I typed my thread above what, 2 hours ago? -- and I just opened a new email from yesterday, turns out it's an order for 44 more operator panels. And these panels are only part of the overall jobs, most panels have plastic legend plates that need engraved, every chair lift tower has a warning sign, every operator house has one or more ID/specification labels, every lift chair has a logo plate, etc...

That's just one customer, and one of two ski-lift mfr customers. The other is Skytrac, which I featured in the 'lots of Cermark' thread. They make the panels thankfully, but those of you who use Cermark, calculate the time it takes to engrave 50% of the surface of a 24" x 28" plate--even though I don't make the plates, each plate takes more working time than scratch-building the aluminum plates...

that's 2 customers... and today, Saturday, speaking of jumping thru hoops, I'm working on these two plus about a dozen other customer's jobs..cowbells, crane simulator operator plates, winch cable guides, stainless radiator cover, liquid dynamite mining truck labels and various machined fiberglass boxes, several gun customer jobs, about 5 customer's worth of SS ID plate jobs, brass badges--- not so much because they're Monday-rush orders, but simply because they're ORDERS, and have more than this many jobs waiting behind these jobs.

And all of these jobs are MY jobs. My BIL that I mention frequently, he does work for about 5-6 other regular customers, mostly button or Rowmark work, just so I don't have to. The wife paints, but doesn't engrave. That's the workforce.

My hoop is a tunnel I can't seem to find the end of! The long hours are getting to me, but it beats the alternative

I just wish everyone could be so busy

[John Lifer]

Saw last month that one of the ski resorts was expecting to stay open into July. Don't know if that is still true, but I expect that you might keep making panels for a while this year. Well, it is GOOD to complain of the work, much better to have too much than not enough! Keep at it! You do have 168 hours a week to work on things........

[John Kleiber]

Last week for me was not much better. I did a bid to logo mark RTIC cups which where coated, one set of 30 black and another set of 30 white. I did the artwork, tested timing and showed them examples. I thought it was a done deal, but no, I guess they found someone else. I don't think people really realize what a pain some pre coated cups can be. I once did an Ozark that I swear was coated with the equivalent of truck bed liner. They also don't realize that some colors take longer and require additional labor to properly clean.

When you have cups taking 15.5 to 16.5 minutes to laser, not too mention cleaning and reboxing... its a lot of time. In a perfect world, that comes out to 4 30 oz cups an hour at best... total 15 hours, 2 days. Something tells me they will be back. Whoever took the deal for any less $ will regret it.

Then, Friday before last, 200 stainless steel rings get droped of late Friday..... customers needs them by Monday, as he exited, "Have a great weekend". grrrrrrr

Lastly I had a guy come in with these wifi cow monitors for dairy farms. He had 200 pcs, oddly shaped, plastic. He said they are very expensive and they need them marked with inventory numbers. He specifically wanted an inventory # in a very small space about 5 mm tall space. Really, you expect be to mark accurately with a CO2 laser a serial in plastic, in that tiny space. To add to the issue they varied in width by a tiny amount, so I was concerned about making a fixture to hold multiple units. So I would have to make a fixture to mark them one at a time. I told him 2.50 each, setup 75.00. So these things are expensive and the customer does not want to spend 2.50 each, plus setup? I suggested an alternate method, like tags adhered with epoxy... nope had to be directly marked as per manufacturer. I did not get that deal either.

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I'm not sure how everyone calculates rush jobs. Mine varies depending on the job, but usually I say 75.00. Of coarse, all customers have different definitions of rush. Our turn around time is 5-7 business days. I define rush as 3 business days. Most customers NEVER hear the word "business".

I also make it a point to always say... "The 5-7 business day starts once we have your product in house and approved proof".

I don't know whats worse, cussing about deals I get that I don't charge enough or deals I don't get because they're priced right..... At the end of the day I'd say the former beats the latter.


-John

[Tim Bateson]

Ditto Steve. lately, never a Friday goes by that someone needs something engraved for a Wedding the next day. Doesn't happen in my shop. Their jobs don't pay enough for me to break my ass, so I turn them away. However... last Wednesday I did get a call for some government type work that was urgent - Had to be ready by Friday night. I took 2 days off my day job to make just over $7k.

[Scott Shepherd]

I've about had my limit of "I HAVE to have this no later than Monday morning" and the items sitting until Friday before they pick them up. I don't mind hard work. I also am glad to stay late and work long hours to help you out of your crisis. However, I'm about done getting lied to on due dates. If you were honest with me, I wouldn't have had to give up my free time and you would have still gotten your parts on time.

We had a fellow sign shop owner we did business with for about 8 years. He would famously call me at 4:00 and need 6-8 hours of work by the following morning. He would tell me how critical it was and how he really needed my help. I'd step up and work until it was done, he'd pick it up on the way to work the next morning and everything was good. Over the last two years, he started telling me how hot things were, then not coming to get it when he said he needed it. Last time he did that, I worked until 1:00am and he was a no show the next morning. I called him. No answer. I texted him, he texted back, said he'd be there shortly. Never showed up. This went on for days. I finally sent him a message and told him if he didn't pick them up that day, they'd be in the dumpster. Don't disrespect my time by making me work until 1am and then not showing up to pick up your job that you "had to have".

He is the only person I every lost my patience with on that stuff, but he did show up and picked it up and continued to use our services, however, next time he said he needed something in a hurry, I told him we couldn't meet his deadline.

[Mel Fulks]

Hello Scott. Believe it or not I thought to myself "that sounds like everything in Richmond" before I noticed the name! I have reccommended the policy of refusing to jump through the hoops anymore for someone who does not keep to their asked for ready time. Have seen it work. This is an old money town ,when they graciously say "no hurry" they mean you don't have to run over to the machine until they are out of sight. They don't like to mistreat their employees!

[John Lifer]

There are customers you MUST fire. It can be for several reasons, your cost vs what customer is willing to pay, unrealistic timeframes that you meet and then they don't need that fast. etc. I've dealt with many in the past. Most famously, a customer my prior boss just thought he had to have their business. We supplied them millions over a couple of years at a LOSS. Yes their volume helped keep our material price down for everything else, but we LOST money on every part we made. I would have fired them immediately, but no, we had to have them... Till we went bankrupt and closed. Gee, wonder why!
Scott, where else is your guy going to go and get things done over a weekend? He may have other shops that he can try, but I'll be most will laugh at him and his timeframe.

[Mark Taylor2]

I don't do commercial work but in the past I did (wasn't laser work). I always quoted three things.... price, delivery date, and the drop dead date for the time for delivery of any materials, plans, etc. and then stick with that policy. No exceptions. Yes, I lost jobs but didn't need them anyway.

I do believe that businesses are seeing things from customers spoiled by the likes of Amazon, etc. The web world... order something and it magically shows up quickly. I was at a car repair shop recently and the young lad customer couldn't get it through his head that this wasn't a "web order". That shops don't keep a supply of parts (an engine in this case) for every car and that it could be swapped out a day. The owner finally told him "here's my price and finish date... take it or leave it.