Do you have any examples of when you are forced to reevaluate why you do business with a company?

Hm. Well, it’s going to be the best man standing in the end. That’s no way to do business.

My worst ever experience was with Direct TV. I hate them.

Have you noticed that cashiers no longer say “thank you”? Customers now say “thank you,” as if the store is doing them a favour by allowing them to shop there. Our culture has completed its transformation into a neo-liberal plutocracy in which the number of rights we have is determined by the amount of money we possess, and access to the means of production in order to generate wealth is granted only to those who increase the wealth and power of the reptilian billionaires who rule the world.

Business used to be about providing a service to the public in exchange for money. Now business exists for the sole purpose of making money and anything they provide to the public is simply an annoying expense item they would do without if they could.

Pretty much every telecommunications company.

I don’t work in the procurement end of our business, so I don’t get to see what you have described, but let me give you an alternate viewpoint: from the supplier’s end. (I know that in your position you also have that view, so this isn’t just for you; I’m sure you have your own examples.)

Several years ago when business was tight we signed a contract with an owner in a Southeast Asian country that shall not be named, who had been extremely demanding in the plant specification. We often talk about customers wanting a “gold-plated” boiler, but these people were nearly asking for that literally. And they would brook no exceptions in the proposal, either, even when we pointed out to them that their demands were not at all in line with “industry standards and practice” and would add to cost without a measurable impact on performance, reliability or longevity of the equipment, nor operations or maintenance costs. They cared not a whit for our objections to their, frankly unreasonable, demands, and since the market at the time was so ultra-competitive we caved, cut our costs prices to match / beat the competition, withdrew all of our exceptions and clarifications, basically closed our eyes and bid the project just to make a sale and continue generating revenue.

Those chickens are now coming home to roost.

We’ve started erection of the plant some months ago, and material deliveries to the site – from suppliers all over the world – are continuing apace. The utility / owner inspectors have been eagle-eyed and sharp-penciled in their criticisms – usually meaningless, according to what we all know about coal-fired boiler materials, equipment, erection and operation. For example, recently a shipment of boiler tubes was ready to leave our Chinese supplier’s facility, and were being loaded on a truck to shipment to the port for loading onto a ship for transport to the site.

The customer’s inspector rejected the shipment, sending it back to the plant for rework. The reason for the rejection? The paint on the boiler tubes had drip marks. Painted boiler tubes – with drip marks.

For those who know nothing about my industry, boiler tubes are painted to help preserve their outside surface for the months (sometimes years) while they may lay in a storage yard at the site, then moved to the staging / pre-assembly area, then erected and waiting for completion of the plant so the boiler can start operating. When the plant is completed and operating, the outside surfaces are all covered – heavily covered – with insulation and stainless steel cladding. The fire-side surfaces of the tubes have the paint burned off within hours of the plant’s starting to fire fuel. So that paint will never be seen anyway once the plant starts operation – and half of it will be gone, anyway.

The paint has absolutely zero requirement for decorative or other appearance perspective – and an inspector rejected a shipment because of paint drips. It’s simply “weather protection” for a few years while the metal is exposed to the atmosphere. This is very much analogous to rejecting delivery of a new car – which you want to buy! – because of a scuff mark on the tread of one of the tires. The scuff mark will be gone by the time you drive around the block with the new car, but “Dammit, I don’t want a scuffed tire tread! Send it back to the factory!”

In our case, this shipment, which would have been “early”, may now be “barely in time”, and depending on what the inspector sees next (because they do these things serially, too; they don’t even attempt sometimes to see all problems at once and point them out – there will be another inspection when the paint problem is corrected, and who knows what will be ‘found’ then?) … we could even be late. The project was already bid to a tighter than normal completion schedule. It remains to be seen what the compilation of these kinds of delays could do to us. This is just a more egregious example of what we’ve been seeing for years already. (Their drawing review and comment process is even worse, from what I’ve been overhearing from the engineers working with them.)

This kind of incident demonstrates a problem that even the best suppliers can face in moving to shorter and tighter supply chains and tight quality policies that attempt to take advantage of just-in-time shipping and reduced inventory: one hiccup can screw production pretty badly.

If I was the supplier i wouldn’t have given the reason that he / she has given unless there is unprecedented shortage of pails which you might be aware of too. Your order would be ready in couple of weeks would have been fine by you right?

@imrainmaker I a not a demanding customer as I plan carefully who I do business with so I don’t have to be demanding and never expect more of my suppliers than I expect of my own employees. I have multiple suppliers of 90% of what materials I need for production. This urethane is a finished product made for me and we have been a loyal patient customer for 4 years now and even though they know our history the lead times are getting worse with ZERO customer care. I called 10 days ago after placing the order over a week prior and asked for a ship date. He said “oh…we just got the order”...I was like Bill I gave you the order Sept 10th and I was expecting a call or fax, email anything so I can tell our customers when to expect the product. Needless to say it will be over a month since I ordered it and I have already found a replacement from another company that is less than a week lead time I may just switch completely over to.

If that’s the scenario i might consider switching to a different one as well.One point to consider though he might be taking you for granted you being a patient one and not making too much noise if such things happen?

A friend of mine just told me a similar story. They own a distribution company, and one of their big suppliers was bought about a year ago and the new owner can’t get his act together I guess. She said her biz is way down, because this supplier can’t deliver goods on time or in full, so in turn my fiends can’t go out and sell more product if the retailers are still waiting for shipments that never showed up. They are really getting worried.

We had an incident with a supplier recently that cost us time and money fixing. Thank goodness our customer was extremely patient. We are trying a new vendor, we’ll see how it goes. My husband was ready to stop offering that service, which when done right makes us a good margin, he’s giving it one more try.

I had earned Gold status with Virgin Australia and had kept it for a few years because we fly fairly regularly domestically and internationally. We always flew with Virgin. We didn’t even bother looking at Qantas (and definitely not Jetstar). Last year when my frequent flyer account anniversary date came around I was 30 status points short of the Gold Class requirement. However, I had booked a return business class ticket to Melbourne on the same day for a flight I would take within a week. The status credits earned for one-way were more than the 30 status credit points I required to maintain Gold status. They dropped me to Silver.

So I contacted their customer service and she basically said tough. Those are the rules. So I said loyalty is a two-way street and I haven’t flown with them since. I’ve made a number of flights, but not with Virgin Australia and I will only use them to a. keep the points I have and b. if there is no reasonable alternative. Given their frequent flyer program is useless if you want to go to Europe, I’ve got sufficient points to go to the US more than once, and I’ll just maintain that for when I need it and build up points with One World or Star Alliance.