Scamed by mfg.com? - post here.

[realdrill]

Sorry to hear that man. I was in the same predicament as you last year. Mfg.com got me for almost $6000 after wasting all that time on quotes that never pan a cent.

Wished I had seen this before. Sucked in and already down 2,500. Just can't work for .10 on the dollar.

[KNIFEMAN]

We joined 3 months back and have quoted over 100 jobs. My quotes were always competitive on the lower end of the quote range. I've even quoted $30. per hr. a couple of times to see what happens. Nothing happened! MFG.COM is a waste of money!! Don't join unless you are willing to do jobs for less than the cost of material.
I'm thinking there are some decent people looking to get some work done but your chances of hooking up with one of the is extremely low.
There are people on the site that really low ball jobs thinking the are going to get in the door. I think this backfires most of the time. It drives the prices of work down and these companies will usually post every job and go for the low ball guy. They aren't going to let you raise the price up to the point of actually making a profit. They are always going to use the low ball guy. Every job has a few extremely low bids because there are so many shops here desperate for work.
That's my take.
Has anyone just stopped paying these guys??

[coolcnc]

A friend of mine used a lawyer to get out of this contract. I am sure you can find a lawyer in your area to deal with mfg.com

[mrpsi7]

MFG Category: Engineering Services & Industrial Design
Business: Engineering Consulting (Mechanical Design & Analysis)
Date Joined MFG: August 2008

The following is what I wrote, on October 10, 2008, to the salesperson who got me signed up:
-Since I joined a few months ago, note the following
*RFQs awarded: 165696, 189581, 190635, 187426, 195521: Total award to all Suppliers: $930. Total awarded = qty.5
*RFQs closed not awarded: including retracted because of mis-categorization, people merely "fishing" with no serious intent, closed with no awards, etc... = qty.21
*RFQs quoted and open, sitting idle: = qty.6

Now, here's where things stand: Even if I had been awarded all of the jobs that had been awarded during this time period, it wouldn't cover the cost of MFG.com + the time to prepare the quotes + time to perform the jobs.

Additional Comments:
A) Now it is March 2009, and the trend has continued, except that I am very choosy about whether or not I quote.
B) Buyer Commitment: At least in this category, there are many non-serious buyers. A fee, even a nominal fee like $5.00 should be charged, to at least weed out the non-serious. There is a flood of first-time buyers, who have no commitment to their project and don't realize how much engineering costs.
C) Busy: Yes, MFG makes one very busy, but it is making quotes only, and not actually getting jobs, for various reasons listed above.
D) MFG doesn't properly follow up with RFQs that are sitting for too long.
E) What's with the 1-year locked in or pay-full-amount-if-you-cancel fine print that I only saw after I really searched for it online? It was no where in the documentation sent for subscription. Even rental agreements or telecommunications agreements aren't this disagreeable.
F) Exposure: Currently, the only benefit that I see is that additional traffic to my site that gets generated. It hasn't translated into sales, but at least it is traffic.

Regards,
Mr. PSI

[Victor]

Mr. PSI,
Your post is really detailed and illustrate the point we try to make here:
1. mfg.com ask for money in advance for a service that they arbitrarily decided it should be $600 a month and locks the victim in a contract for one year.
2. They are a fraud because they know that the majority of "subscribers" don't get a minimum of $6000 a month in contracts to justify the fee.
3. They are a scam because they have all the data in their hand (everything is done through their site, offers, quotes, contacts,etc.) and they know they are cheating the folks like you and formerly me.
4. Who are the vendors are all legit are they all real, how can we know?
We did not get a single contract in one year after spending $6000 and countless hours in quoting/bidding.

Sharing your experience here is helping others - thank you all.

[DavidR]

First of all thank you for posting your experiences with mfg.com, we are from Mexico and we received a lot of mails too from MFG with many RFQ to quote, after months we almost decided to pay them, until we started to ask ourselves lots of questions about how it "works", and even here in Mexico its cheaper not the material, but the hand work than in US, they didnt give us contacts from others shops (located also in mexico) to ask how it was the experience of quoting with MFG, beacause "its private information and their suppliers didnt want to be bother by other machine shops".... and that was the end of it.
All trustfull companies always try to convince you to purchase their products with their satisfied clients... not denying you them...

[american]

There appears to be bogus companies created by MFG.com to make it look like there is plenty of availible work, I quoted 150 jobs at extremely low prices, an example would be "I quoted 10 machined tubes", I would price them @ $1.50 each totaling $15.00. They should be quoted at $50.00 each totaling $500.00. I did this with intellipack, rail Development, industrial Services. I did not get any response what so ever. There is no dout that some of these companies are doing cost analysis, others are sales houses letting us do their quoting for them and some companies are just fake, I tried to contact Industrial Services, there is zero contact information, I sent a message to the buyer but did not receive a reply. Am I wrong or is MFG.com 99 percent bullshit? I tell eveyone I Know about this scam in an attempt to stop this fraud, I would suggest we all do the same so people don't get hurt, I have had many sales people work for me, drain the company of 40k a year, and do a shitty job, so to lose 5k is chump change compared to adding a sale person..(I paid 5k in one shot for a one year subscription to MFG.COM). Victor, I can't tell you enough that you are doing a great service for the high tech community. Thanks!!!!

[teb666]

add about .9 more % and you would be closer to the true bull rating. same problem here. ?

[Victor]

Guys,
I started this forum to get back at mfg.com that cheated me out of my money. You all had the same bad experience like me and I feel your anger and outrage. If i was by myself posting here people will believe that I am just a stupid "nut case" that does not know how to use a computer and is my fault that I couldn't get any jobs from mfg.com. Our power is in our numbers - the more of us coming out the better.

The point is what we do now?
Do we let the the mfg.com crooks have their way with other unsuspected hard working Americans OR we do something about it?
We need to keep this issue alive, we need to keep the discussion current.

These days is much easier to do a search on Google and find out about almost anything about any company. Our forum comes up on top searches for "mfg.com fraud", "mfg.com scam", "mfg.com sucks" or "mfg.com ripoff". We can get new words that are likely to be used be people in a search like "mfg.com problems", "mfg.com issues", mfg.com success", mfg.com results", "mfg.com marketing", etc., just use them when you post a message.

Let's hit them where it hurts - cutting their income by informing the new would be suckers (I meant customers).

[MFGsucker]

I joined MFG just about a year ago, mainly for woodworking. A complete and total waste of money. Like everyone here, results have been buyers who vaporize, don't respond to very accurately detailed questions via email in order to put together a valid quote, don't award anyone, or who decline quotes saying its not competitive and they intend to keep selling their product for the same price they've been selling them for while developing them in their basement type of shop. Also, recently, had an RFQ quoted at approximately material costs in the US by a Chinese company. Project was awarded to Chinese company and the buyer later found out the company didn't even have the equipment to do the job! Can you imagine this? So it is blatantly obvious that not only does China have its hands throughout MFG, but there are companies bidding projects without even understanding the equipment needed to do so.

But now my main problem. After going back and forth with sales for months - getting quoted a variety of prices which changed more than the weather, each time being told that if i joined "today" they would waive the set up fee, and so on. I wanted a 6 month contract, got a quote. I opted for a 1 year contract which seems to be the standard. Well the sales person faxed me the contract telling me I had to fax it back ASAP in order to waive the setup fee. I TRUSTED the sales person too much because he made the contract for a 2 year term, and I did not catch this until 2 months ago, when I was mentally, after approaching what I thought was my 1 year expiration, happy to know my overhead was finally leaving my business!

I've written to the CEO, CFO, and COO - no response. My account manager, ignores my specifics in the email and just sends more 'hot RFQ's' like a good salersperson would.

But now, here is the best part. Before joining, I was reluctant to pay a cent in fear that overseas companies were quoting MFG projects at prices no US company would be able to compete. Sales people were quick to divert these worries with numbers, statistics, 'so much work out there' and so on. Yet they could never give me an accurate quote for woodworking. And today, I can tell you that the numbers they show on their site for woodworking, are not at all accurate. Completely made up.

So while researching MFG before signing up to see if this company was a scam or not, I unfortunately did not come across this site but I did find a quote online by Mitch Free (current CEO) from 2002, written by him. He was writing in response to vendors and potential vendors concerns about offshore bidding. Mitch Free writes:

"As for the shop rate issue, there have been numerous posts on that topic and it is perplexing. I am very passionate about protecting manufacturing in the U.S. and Canada, so we don't promote our services to suppliers overseas. It sickens me to see work go offshore. But our challenge is..... what can we do to help shop rates domestically?

I finally have some projects which did not require a NDA which show awards to Chinese manufacturers at extremely low rates. Prior to this, I had to sign NDA's with buyers so I legally could not reveal this fact and the prices. Well now I finally have documented proof of this I can use for public viewing to show that MFG, despite what Mitch Free says "sickens him", does indeed welcome overseas suppliers on the US site, despite having MFG europe, etc. I presented Mitch Free with his own quote by email, and as of yet (2 weeks), to no surprise here, no response. Evidently he's either sold out, was just saying what US vendors wanted to hear, or else got some good medical help to prevent him from being sickened by overseas businesses taking work from US companies who, as anyone knows, cannot compete. Evidently his "passion" to protect manufacturing in the US and Canada has gone by the wayside over the past 7 years.

I encourage any and all of you who share this concern to write to him, present his own words to him, and see what he has to say, *if* he responds. From my experience, it seems as though all of MFGs correspondences like to be done over the phone,and have little to nothing in writing for obvious purposes. Mitch's email address is mfree@mfgquote.com. If anyone does hear from him, please post the response here.
My advice to any and all small to midsize shops, expecially woodworking, stay away from MFG. You will truly waste a lot of time and money bidding on phantom projects, "buyers" simply shopping around and not committed to their projects, and others simply thinking they have the next big product yet zero business plan, no funding, and no idea what anything costs. Their customer service is only in the form of Piping more RFQ's your way, ignoring getting into any and all details and concerns you may have.

Has anyone seriously looked into a Class Action against the company as of yet?

For anyone that wants to see Mitch's actual post, you don't have to take my word for it. See it here for yourself:
http://www.mmsonline.com/dp/forums/forum_results.cfm?t_id=920&f_id=95&pub=MMS