I am feeling frustrated.
I spend time reading these posts and respond to quite a few of them.
Most of these are just left dangling, no responses posted back, no PMs sent back and no emails recieved.
I have yet to recieve any work through these sites and I am fighting an uphill battle in that respect - I do not begrudge this fact and keep submitting quotes anyway, I am a large shop and know that I can't compete on small jobs against afterhours backyard machinists (as the case is sometimes) and people tend to be afraid of importing for some reason.
The thing that is annoying me is that very few RFQ posters are closing anything, the threads remain open with no responses from the original poster.
Are most of these drive-by RFQs?

Whatever happened to common courtesy for the guy that spends valuable time considering and quoting on your RFQ?

THANK YOU!

DareBee,
Since machining is not my real source of income I am probably one of those after hours machinists you are referring to :D

But...
I could not agree more with you sentiments, it is just not right for RFQ posters to just ignore those that have spent time in answering a RFQ. Certainly not all have been doing that, some have kept right on top of it, thank you !!, however, this just ignore attitude is not all that uncommon and should not be tolerated. These RFQ should all be closed even if the closing stated that the quotes were appreciated but found to be too costly to continue.

Valid post DareBee.

Ken

I have been actually very concered about this issue. Although I can't force the poster to respond back. Also, with unresponded posts I can only assume the users took it up over an email or phone call.

This is not a site fault. It is going to happen, and you are correct, there is not much that you are able to do about it.
I guess we should just grit our teeth, learn to overlook it and move on.

What I have begun to do is send a private message asking a question of some sort, there is always something missing from the RFQ post that you
are able to ask a legitimate question. I judge how serious they are about their RFQ based upon how long it takes for a reply. If it takes days for a response or none at all then to me that is a big red flag that this person may not be as serious about his RFQ as I am serious about getting him one and I just pass on that one.

We might want to keep in mind here that this can go both ways with the RFQ poster being the one drug along.

I guess the answer lies in each of us, we can all behave as a professionals with out necessarily being a professional.

Ken

I have posted an rfq and received 4 responses, I have replied personally to all of them. I would like to close the RFQ now but don't see a button to push, apparently only the Admin do this?
Granted I could post that I'd found the right person for the job but that wouldn't be entirely truthful either...
I suppose it would be a lot of trouble to code the BB to allow original posters to lock or delete a thread. Maybe not?

dkbgs,
I would just close it by replying, indicating that the RFQ has been filled and thanking everyone for they're quotes.

Ken

I highly disagree
Once a customer has decieded who is getting the job the RFQ should be erased so the rest of us don't keep seeing it !!

I have posted an rfq and received 4 responses, I have replied personally to all of them. I would like to close the RFQ now but don't see a button to push, apparently only the Admin do this?
Granted I could post that I'd found the right person for the job but that wouldn't be entirely truthful either...
I suppose it would be a lot of trouble to code the BB to allow original posters to lock or delete a thread. Maybe not?

If you haven't said anything in the email we wouldn't know if you found buyers.

DareBee,

You are correct that us buyers need to do a better job awarding jobs here. I closed my thread but still need to respond to e-mailed quotes individually.

One comment, buyers SHOULD be afraid of importing. I just got hosed on brokerage fees from Canada. My RFQs now state:

"If you are suppling from outside the continental USA you MUST include all shipping, taxes, tariffs, brokerage, customs, etc charges IN your quote. No exceptions will be made."

One question, do job shops want/should they get feedback on thier quote? I regularly get quotes that vary by a factor of 4 or 5 for the same job.

-Jeff

Okay, I just e-mailed everyone.

-Jeff

I also have submitted many quotes here. I have come to the conclusion that many of the requesters, have no idea what mfg costs are and when they see a quote higher then what they think is expected, they just either abandon the idea or figure out something else. I know that in my area, I am in the midrange for prices, so I should see SOME response to RFQ's. Nothing so far. Which also makes me suspect that many buyers are using this service to get an idea for pricing their product or as an argument for lower prices to a shop they are already dealing with.
One other thing may also be happening, Shops may be trying to underbid the other guy on the same job, I simply refuse to go under my shop rate.
I'm just not going to play that game
There is something wrong though...Everywhere I bid, except here, I see about 30% of that work awarded to my shop. I've been at that sucess rate for over 25 years. Not here or any other online RFQ site.
Go Figure.........
Jim

If you're looking to make a living, you're looking in the wrong place.

great responses from everyone.
I would definately like the originater of the RFQ to post that the job is fullfilled and thankyou.
Importing can be costly depending on the avenue taken.
For instance, if I go through my broker it costs me $50 flat for their service then I pay shipping yet, on a large job this is easiest/best method for me and $50 does very little to the bottome line.
For a small box of parts I just fill out a NAFTA certificate of origin and ship, price is just shipping then.
Another point of interest, if the sale goes to a private individual the US govt requires that the shipper supplies the recievers social security number. If it is a sale to a business then the business number is required.

Presently doing business with Canada saves you 15 cents on the dollar.

OK let me ask this, does everyone feel this way about doing business with Canada?
I would appreciate you letting me know so I can stop quoting work if no one here wants to deal out of country.

Thanks

We have subscribed to MFGQuote for several years and have the same problems there; non response, or awarded off line, or just canceled. I would guess that in one years time I quoted close to 250 jobs through them (injection molded products) and over half where purchase officers bouncing numbers to get the current suppliers to lower their cost. We are now doing the same with CPM fastools to see if the machine shop side is as corrupt as the injection molded side. The number of items to quote is about 10X that of injection molding but I still get the impression that it is purchase managers using the quotes as a stick to pound the current suppliers into lower prices. It is interesting to note; for every person that walks into my shop for a quote I get the job, for everyone that calls on the phone I would say 75% we get. Online quotes are less then 5%. Just shows that the more effort the person has to go through the more likely they are to be serious. It is just too easy to post an RFQ as opposed to picking up a phone or heaven forbid actually meeting a person face to face.
As for feedback, yes. The biggest benefit to the quote process, second to winning a bid is to at least see how you faired. Where you high or Low? To long of a lead? These are all good questions to have answers too, plus it makes me sleep better at night knowing I am not wasting time on bogus quotes.

You can't not quote jobs, there is no way of knowing real quotes vs. bogus vs. Purchasers bouncing numbers. My only suggestion is to automate the quote process as much as possible so you spend less time and therefore do not feel like you are being taken advantage of.

Good luck

OK let me ask this, does everyone feel this way about doing business with Canada?
I would appreciate you letting me know so I can stop quoting work if no one here wants to deal out of country.


DareBee, you seem to be **unusually** well informed about customs and shipping. Once, I got a quote from Austrailia, and I asked what the parts would cost to get here and they had no idea... I dropped them like a hot potato.

I'm **happy** to accept quotes from out of the country as long as all the shipping related issues are known by the supplier, and the cost is guaranteed by the supplier.

I'd suggest making this an explicit part of your quotes. I love it when a supplier includes stuff in thier quote that shows me they are thinking about making things easier for me.

Happy to do business with our well-informed northern neighbors,

-Jeff

Thanks Jeff
I have shipped over border a few times.
Usually complete automation equipment.
With that kind of money involved nobody ever worries about brokerage costs.
Please don't take my previous post about shipping as "gospel" because things DO change but those items are accurate to the experiences I have had.

If the user who started the thread could denote that he/she wants it deleted by a sale. I will be more than happy to delete it for them.

On Ebay you can rate suppliers an buyers on how good their service was. Maybe we could have a similar thing here, so if somebody is being impolite or untrustworthy people can see that and respond appropriately.

On Ebay you can rate suppliers an buyers on how good their service was. Maybe we could have a similar thing here, so if somebody is being impolite or untrustworthy people can see that and respond appropriately.


We have a "rate this thread" option and als we have a forum topic dedicated for comments on users or businesses.

-garrett
rfq admin

I am fairly confident that vBulletin software has the ability to allow the poster to delete or modify his/her posts. That of course would have to be set-up by the board admin.

Yes it does but I'm not making that available, you can close your thread, but not delete it.

For what its worth.

I think this problem requires less bitching and more creative thought. These BB's are all written in PHP which means if you can dream it you can code it. After seeing the reviews of other sites of this nature I'm glad to have found this one and fairly immune to any BS that may find itself under my foot.

I'm no PHP wiz but I have friends that are, and I'm sure I could persuade their help. The whole concept of this board, to me anyway, seems to be more community oriented that money oriented. Most programmers get a woody anytime you say open source, and in a round about sort of way thats what this is. Its in the open and the "admin" isn't clearing a cent besides the total chump change google pays him for the links ( I worked for google I know how they can get lol ).

I read in an earlier post about rating people who originate RFQ's and the response was "we have a rate this thread". I like this idea, but obviously that puts the burden upon us to actually rate and upon the admin to act accordingly. This could be automated though. Lets say add a button for the author of any thread within certain formums thats says "filled". Now add another button that only shows for non-author of thread that says "unresolved". A simple algorithm could work out the times that each (or just one) of the responses was entered and after a certain amount of violations the "requester" would be banned from posting. All this could be done with script and require nothing from the admins. I cant pull this off myself but I have people who can make it happen.

I just want to contribute to this board because I really dig its core philosophy as "I see it". Community is important to me and a site like this shows selfless love for the trade I love.

Bring more suggestions and lets figure out a way to make it happen.

I guess yall aint ready for all that. Sorry if I came across pushy, I'm quiet from here out on this issue. Then again maybe this board isn't that active, I have no idea. But I want this board to not only survive but thrive. Kudos to ADMIN, you rarely see labors of love these days that result in other peoples profit while your left holding the complaint box.