www.mfg.com pro or con

[DTHOMSON]

Not sure I'm in the correct forum here. I recently received an email soliciting "requests for quote" from them to do machining work. Anybody have SUCCESSFUL experience with this type of bidding process? I'm skeptical about this and I'm interested to hear of pros and cons. Thanks for any comments.

[GoetzInd]

If you like loosing money and making it up in volume it's a great place to get business.

 

Mike

[Newbeeee™]

Also if in any doubt, have a look on practical machinist.com. Some scathing threads and posts on there.

[Robert Ouellette]

my shop tried it a few years ago and most of the stuff we bid on were false ads. we contacted the buyer direct and ask if they got our quote and how we did and we it would be awarded and they told us either they did not get our quote or they did not even place the request for quote on there. we never won any bids and never got any work from there. and just for poops and giggles we put in a bid that would have under cut anyone and everyone no matter how you quote it or even if you got material for free and you gave it away and still nothing. total waste of our time and money. we even made a few pieces to get any accurate price and cut it by half and still nothing. we were still highest bidder. as far as we could tell the rfq's on there were fakes and no one ever got any work from there. one of our local screw machine shops even tried bidding on some high volume screw machine parts and even they could not get anything. total scam as far as I see it. only people making money if MFG.com. and im not making any of this up. I did all the quotes and saw all the results and I was the one making the calls to buyers. nothing.

[specv]

We did it a few years ago as well, and Robert is right, I think you would have to have free material and a $25 an hour shop rate to even see an actual order. I think a lot of the companies on there use it because they can get fast quotes and if they are subing out government contract work they can show they got enough quotes to bid the job.

[crazy^millman]

Tried it many years ago and never got one order from them. We quote $.01 center per part and didn't get work on a $5k part like others just to see if we would get anything and got nothing. I also reached out to other companies to see why we were not getting orders and most times it was crickets.

[JAMMAN]

Their website would lead you to think they are the greatest and the only way. Never heard of them till now .

[Joe788]

. only people making money is MFG.com.

 

That's about right. We were on their spam mail list for a long time, probably because of their affiliation with Modern Machine Shop. Sometimes they'd pick specific, big dollar RFQs and send them over as bait. On multiple occasions I told them, "Ok, let me bid that job. If I get it, and the customer pays, I'll give you $20,000."

 

The response is always, "Oh we can't do that."

 

Also, the way they calculate that astronomical amount of $$$$ being awarded, is an absolute farce. When "buyers" post an RFQ, they post an estimated annual usage. The actual RFQ quantities aren't the same as the EAU. So when Billy Bob posts his RFQ for his prototype hillbilly hand-fishin' rig, his estimated annual usage is 1,000,000 pieces. Then he awards the 1pc quantity to some sucker for $250, and never even actually pays (since he's planning on selling that prototype to pay for the prototype). That RFQ just added $250,000,000 to the "total" of work awarded through MFG.com.

[GoetzInd]

So when Billy Bob posts his RFQ for his prototype hillbilly hand-fishin' rig, his estimated annual usage is 1,000,000 pieces. Then he awards the 1pc quantity to some sucker for $250, and never even actually pays (since he's planning on selling that prototype to pay for the prototype).

 

I've dealt with quite a few Billy Bobs. They're always baffled why you are hesitant to get on the the ground floor and bankroll their "invention".

 

Mike

[mkd]

i put something on their site that could have actually been awarded. a few places actually contacted me.

"do you have that in an *igs format?" was about as far as i got.

 

and as a vendor it takes a few tries to get off their spam list

[DTHOMSON]

Thank You all for your comments. I thought this approach might be a lot of thunder and a lot of lightning, but no rain!

I appreciate it.