Has anybody had luck with this service lately, back in 04 everybody was losing a lot of time and money quoting and never landing any work. just wondering

Worst investment I ever made for my shop. I spent about $4000. for a year and never got one single job. If this (mfg) was a piece of equipment I would have taken it out to the parking lot and burned it to the ground. Please if anybody is thinking about trying this please email me before you do, just to hear my side as a shop owner....ddprecisionmachining@yahoo.com
Don Cook

I have posted this same question on many, many, other forums as well. I have never gotten a response from anyone who has won any jobs through them, let alone recouped their investment.

Same here

we must have quoted 2 o3 hundred jobs and only landed 1 for 400$ lol. Never again

Hello

Thank you for bringing up the subject. I have about 3 more months of wasting my time with manufacturing quote (MFG). I have been awarded only 3 jobs by one company for about 1500.00 . (about 1000.00 dollars under quoted). I think MFG missleads people by telling them that they wont have to under quote to get awarded jobs. WRONG. I can give hundreds of examples of jobs going for extremely extremely extremely low pricing. Although it is not MFG's fault. It is the fault of the people quoting the jobs and the companies accepting only the lowest bid. Do not waste your time and money on MFG.

Gus

what they said.
i think we MIGHT have broke even on our "investment".
that is of course not including the countless wasted hours of
going through rfq's, getting material quotes, etc..
saw jobs go on mfg. quote that were pennies above material costs.
DONT DO IT.

I just want to thank all you guys for posting on this.

I was close to getting this "service" myself, for my shop. The first thing that made me nervous was the sales guy from MFG.com calling and emailing me every day telling me how many rfq's they had, what a deal he was giving me, and how much money I was going to make. He was a pushy... not good. Anything that sounds too good to be true, usually is.

I read some posts from another site as well that has around another 30 or so guys saying the same thing... DON'T DO IT! [http://www.practicalmachinist.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/26/64.html}

Anyway... I kept my money and I owe it part to you guys...

THANKS!!!

Bob

Glad I read this, they have been emailing daily and phone calls. Thanks.

It's nice to have forums like this to help get the message out.

Thinking about sending a link for this forum thread to the salesman who keeps emailing us. What do you guys think? Interested in his response?

They know, and I think don't care. I tried for months to get out of my contract with mfg. they would not release me from it. The last 2 or 3 months I didn't even log onto mfg. It was a waste of my time. Just let everybody know that you can. It sounds like two have made the right move.

i guess my mind is made up...............

Just wanted to say this about MFG quote. From a buyers stand point they are excellent. We send out a decent amount of work (we only have manual machines)and I have been using them (MFG) for about 1-1/2 years to find suppliers.

We have projects ranging from 6pcs up to 500 pcs. all fairly easy parts (nothing that would require 5 axis machining or anything like that). Just mainly late and mill type stuff.

The most quotes that we have gotten on one part is 20 (we only allow US companies to bid on our projects, no offense but our parts are only sold in the US so we feel they need to be made in the US). I posted that same part on RFQ.com and only got two quotes.

My point is we have found several companies that do repeative work for us. For example one part we posted on MFG turned into 9 different pieces for that one company. We now spend about $1200 a month with just them. The company that I am referring to has a $60/hr. shop rate, so they are not doing it a extremely low rate.

On the point about them calling all the time, I do agree with that, even as a buyer they still call us quite frequently to make sure everything is ok. Yeah, I really could do without all the phone calls.

As a buyer the cost is totally free, but from what I have heard the fees for the suppliers are enourmous.

From the tab that shows "RFQs Awarded Online" it seems like there is alot of business being done from there site.

Just a thought from a buyers stand point.

I'd love the opportunity to quote some of your work. I have tried MFG.com, FirstIndex, RFQwork.com. I'm not too far from you in this day and age. I have landed work on all but never enough to justify their fees. I've been in business 10 years and in machining for over 25. My shop is completely paid for and I have extremely low overhead. That dosen't mean I work for free but I am usually very competitive. Spending hundreds of hours quoting jobs to land a few and then pay a fee on top of that wasn't working for me. After contacting many of these suppliers they were doing a wide variety of things. First alot of the jobs were just being quoted for cost anaysis and engineering reports and were never awarded online. They were also using the quotes online to put pressure on their current suppliers to lower prices and again were not awarded to online bidders. Then there's those that quote jobs for material cost or less in hopes of keeping there doors open for another month or getting their foot in the door of a new supplier.
Second if these services charged a nominal fee to place a quote, say $1, that would eliminate most of the tire kickers and if the services was saving them the amounts they claimed should easily recoup that cost.

I am like the rest of the small shops. Who can afford to pay $7000 for something that has no guaranteed return. I am a one man shop with one machining center. I do just fine by myself. My customers like it that I will talk to them 7 days a week. Customer service is important.
I get the emails from them all the time telling me how many jobs were awarded. I keep forgetting to cancel any and all ties with them.
I did sign up for source authority years ago when it was free. Now it's around $700 or so to join plus 5% commision. I got grandfathered in so it's still free to me. I almost landed a $30,000 job but the shipping cost killed it. Good luck!!
www.hobbymachine.net

Let me just give you my perspective as a buyer on the site.

I have about a total of 8 RFQ's posted online.

I get all sorts of quotes ranging the whole gammit.
Just for example, on a quantity 50 order, I have gotten as little as $5 per part all the way up to $795

Also, I have discovered only one man locally (within 60mi) who had the helpful advice I need on a few of the parts. I feel that if you put in the time and effort, and have a reasonable price, than I would be more inclined to use their service. However, he hasn't followed up recently on e-mail or the phone. I sent him updated drawings to no avail.. (I think he landed a better job off of the MFG site)

I am sorry there are people who have lost their money. I myself after reviewing the extra high costs have begun to look into purchasing a CNC Mill for myself, learn to use the Mill, and produce parts that pay for the machine rather than putting out RFQ's.

I am a college student who is using my loan money to produce a small introductory line of products, and must squeeze out every bit of margin I can.