I have been having some bad luck with ordering cuts of wire lately and am wondering if it is just me. A couple weeks ago we pulled a 500 ft feeder run and had some trouble. Ordered 526ft X4 500MCM and 1 #1/0 GRD. Pulled the first leg (360ft) and peeled off the rest to pull in the other direction and what do we find!? The ground is 40ft short! We are inside an operating retail store in the middle of the night, the feeders can't be spliced and there is a bunch of 500MCM laying on the floor. What are you supposed to do!? Later two separate cuts of #2 were short and one run of #4. All this cost us tons of wasted labor. The whole sale houses answer is they will give us another cut of wire but how do you get compensated for lost time and labor? I'm sure they are not going to cough it up. Oh well, that's what makes life interesting I guess.

Service is poor everywhere. I guess the wire length computer was broken that day.
I repeatedly get shipped the wrong stuff, myself. It adds excitement to a dull life!

Maybe it's to make up for the times they cut them long. (kinda like running a stop sign, and stopping twice for the next one).

Maybe they just have a derelict measuring, and 4 out of 5 is not too bad an average for him/her.

Just the results of our schools. How many times do you see cashers who cannot make change without the register doing it for them? I have a simple math test for prospective employees. Can they read a tape measure? Can they add and subtract fractions? Can they convert feet and inches to inches? Over 40% fail. I took the questions from a 1965 5th grade arithmetic book. If they cannot pass this simple 10 question test no job. It is a pity that we have so many who just do not know how to even try to do a good job, Let alone those who do not care.

yuppy;
i get this sort of service all the time ! it really tics me off. I use all the on-line & hardcopy catalogs i can to type out specific part #'s for a faxed order. They always screw up one way or another, and they could care less!!!
No volume...No voice !!!

ya know, the auto parts industry actually has an ASE certification, those parts pedalers may have had some field experience, try an' find that in our parts biz.

talk to some GC's and find out how their suppliers deal with a labor killin' order and U start to see how we are gettin' shorted here.

an' these are the same people that cry when Lowes or HD comes to town, personally...i hope they give the established suppliers a good run for thier money. HE**, they hire more experienced isle help that most of the counter help i encounter!!

Exactly the same here I'm afraid. Just the other day I had someone who couldn't work out 12 x 35 without getting a calculator out. When I said "420", he asked how I worked it out so quickly. He'd apparently never heard of mental short-cuts, i.e. 10 x 35 = 350, add 2 x 35 = 70, result 420.


We have 16-year-olds leaving school here who don't even know how many inches are in a foot! Thanks to our government's crazy drive to force everyone into using metric, apparently they no longer teach English units in our schools.

The govt. may have made it illegal for shops to sell in non-metric measurements, but the majority of British people still use feet & inches. Teaching only metric is doing our kids a grave injustice.

I am afraid even with volume it doesn't make much difference. The contractor I work for does over $150 million a year. (I think ranked 18th in the country last year in total sales) We still get hosed by the suppliers. I think in our case these are seen as small amounts of money and with everyone so busy they don't feel it's worth their time to pursue.

I must be lucky here...

Blue Grass Electric does a darn good job for their low volume of sales. Yes, I probably have to order things more often that the rest of you, but every one of those guys will bend over backwards for me... And I'm a very low volume customer... Maybe $25K per year in business.

I've never had a short lenghth of wire. Usually it is several feet too long, and the customer wants a refund for the scrap (that was "free" anyway)!...

Never had a problem with short measures here, but at the local branch of one big nation-wide supplier I amazed at how often they're out of stock of basic items, including certain sizes of cable. The branch concerned is supposed to be a "super-store" with big stocks as well!


Ever had a customer who expected you to save the 2 ft. offcuts to join together and use somewhere else in the house?

Nick, let me test my guessing

Sasco...GE Supply

Ge Supply won't even deal with contractors here. I have to go to an "authorized reseller" of GE junk to get any. UNless, I allow GE Supply direct access to my business checking account, and the ability to check balances at any time, not just when I order anything. I think I still have the faxed application around here somewhere....

This has happened to me, but the GE supply fixed it right up. I truly believe the branches do well on a case by case basis.

I was an electrical foreman at a steel mill in Joliet IL. GE supply always treated us well, some of the other suppliers in the chicagoland area wouldn't even come and speak with me....no matter how much money I had to spend:)

I work for a supplier of automation equipment now (I'm in technical support....not sales....most salesmen drive me nuts.) The economy is falling like a meteor. You would think that with ~40% business drops (so I've heard,) the larger suppliers would cater to the smaller outfits because of market share loss. It seems like it's inversely proportional....they seem to be worse. I hear this from customers daily.

Has anyone walked into a walmart or mall lately....they are empty. Consumer confidence is way down. I hope and pray that the US takes care of these terrorists and we can start healing...and eventually get business back to normal.

I appreciate this forum a great deal, thanks guys.

Carl

Guys, I'm not trashing GE Supply, believe me.
We've got an inside salesman @ GE Supply that has >20 yrs with them. As such, he has lots of vacation time. This guy's a real pro, and has saved my butt many a time, gives great service. If he takes some time off, he always lets us know in advance.
We will order as much ahead of time as possible, filling the shop like squirrels for winter, because the temporary substitute is not so hot.
I've ordered a whole job's worth of material and loaded the site with electricians, only to have the GE semi truck pull up with one 4S box in a plastic bag. A call to the substitute salesperson just results in her bad attitude and denial of responsibility.
I thought that Nick's salesperson might have taken some time off, and they might have gotten the "bad seed" as a sub.(He would very likely order from the same office as I)

Close, Morrow-Meadows.... Graybar.
GE Supply has always been very good. Unfortunately I think we get a better deal with Graybar and a small local supplier called Gains. We get pretty good service usually they just have some personnel that drop the ball a little to often. I had a real bad problem with the last fixture order I had with Graybar. They were low bid on a $million + fixture package (lots of specialty stuff for Disneyland) and everything was wrong or late or missing accessories or....
In all fairness some of the other jobs went to GE and they were not much better from what I understand.


electure: FYI Sasco does over $400 million a year! They are the largest single (non roll up) contractor in the USA

So I'm not clairvoyant, darn it!
We also use GainEs, home of the real John Holmes, (another famous name)

...and here I thought I had it allll figured out.

I had a real bad problem with the last fixture order I had with Graybar.

You would think that with ~40% business drops (so I've heard,) the larger suppliers would cater to the smaller outfits because of market share loss. It seems like it's inversely proportional....they seem to be worse. I hear this from customers daily.

In Fact , they're a golden example here, got all the substation work with the big boys, then the well went dry.....

So they sent out salesmen to take all us small change out to lunch, tried real hard to break into the telecom biz, but flopped miserably at both here.

how many of you have called ahead for a part only to arrive at the suppler and find out they show it 'on the computer' only?

I'm not really hammering GE Supply, too much, I just don't understand why they backed out of a pretty good market here. Yep, Graybar has been a bit of a disappointment ot me as well. I'm back to using a couple of independents mainly for day to day stuff.
My biggest gripe is that I fax or call in an order, and when we get there the next day, THEN they pull the ticket and start pulling parts. So I have a guy enjoying that WONDERFUL coffee for an hour or so waiting for the materials

Rexel also has popcorn and sometimes donuts.
(Maybe they need to try showing movies, too.)
The only time they pull anything for will-call before you get there is late in afternoon when they want to go home.

One of the Sasco crew lives in the tract behind our house. Nice Guy.

My "Ex" Brother-In-Law [Ex from Sister's Divorce] worked with Morrow-Meadows in the late '70s - early '80s. Not a nice Guy! [he was a real violent as**ole!].

Walthers' had Popcorn, which varied at times from fresh, to mold cultures [making their own Penicillin??? ]. Same for Coffee.
I saw a Donut there once!, it was holding a door to the offices open
This was back in 1991, so maybe the Donut is gone..... ...

The two places we get materials from feed you Candy, fresh coffee, Donuts [choose the consumable ones from the "Pick Thrus" and "Poked Ones"]. Sometimes there's sandwiches and cake, even had pie once!

Most of the time, if I fax an order the day before [or even early AM to pick up late PM that same day], both places will have it sitting in carts at the rollup door, ready to go! Invoice and Pen even with the materials, ready to be signed.

Once in a while - when needed, they'll set materials outside for us to pick up after closing.

The orders I described normally would not include a lot of EMT, or major amounts of large wire, but would include boxes, conns, coups, yadda-yadda-yadda... just not 2,000' of 4" EMT + 3,000' of 6" PVC Sch 80.

To sum it up, I do not agree that filling your dog house with sand will detour space aliens from taking up residence in said dwelling, but it could help eliminate the whole cold fusion problem.

Also, I do agree that if a person enters the shower, turns on the water, then runs around inside the shower with the water on and applies shampoos + soaps to their body, this will be an effective measure to cleanse the body, plus remove the offensive odors.

Scott SET

Whoa, you lost me, Scott...

He's a Californian

Don't mind me, just goofing around!
Actually, Scott has pin-pointed the underlying truth.
If you guys get irritated by the quantum leaps, feel free to fire some flames my way.

Few of my close friends and I get together, then start throwing those kinds of discussions at each other, or at someone being serious - it sure gets some bizarre looks!
After 3 hours, it's difficult to stop!

Scott SET

I guess what I should've said was:

What does that have to do with the price of chinese eggs in Connelsville Pennsylvania?

Or:

Oh, and the difference between an orange is vests, because moose don't like sweaters...

I can be "wierd" too!

(With apologies to Scott W. & Scott T.)

I worked high tech in the late 70's, early 80's, prototype shop . I was witness to much conjecture , most of which i had little grasp of, but sounded the same