How far?

Man, and all this time, I've been using drill bits for the holes. :-)

Whole army. My kid says he hates 'em, because it makes them look French.

On Sun, 1 Aug 2004 06:57:13 -0600, Eugene wrote (in article ):

Same here! Another problem is the box of screws (the cheap ones) usually are hecho in China....

-Bruce

You aren't alone! My shop (shipping address) is more than fifteen miles away from my home (billing address). Last week a young lad struggled to carry a shipment of six-foot aluminum and brass bars up the stairs to my third-floor condo.

The next morning, of course, I got to carry the whole lot back down the stairs, load the works into my 2-door coupe, drive it all to the shop, unload it, and carry it all to the storage area.

I had called the "customer service" department right before ordering online to ensure that there wouldn't be any glitches...

The invoice did show the correct addresses. )-:

Your Ace went out of biz?? I live in a small town,(6000) a BORG moved in about 18 mo. ago. One lumber yard closed, the other is still going strong(?) But Ace is going all out. went there yesterday, needed some "o" rings to rebuild a kitchen. Had already been to HD, (closer), and they didn't have both sizes. The guy at Ace took about 3 seconds to find a pack w/ both sizes. He knew the manufacturer, and such. Customer service isn't dead yet!!

Sw>>The BORG is not a hardware store. Go to Ace. They will sell you one screw > > or a >

True that he unlocked the door. His goal was to have a new market for us to sell our goods. He isn't the one that started the industrialization of China and all of the transfer of technology that has taken place.

Wayne

You are wrong about that. The ships will come from Hyundai Heavy Industries in Korea.

Wayne

There may be one or two folks out there that are not familiar with the stockman's use of the term "service". For those folks, it's what the bull dues to the cow.

Tom Veatch Wichita, KS USA

Sad, but we have no choice.

We have some molds made in Korea. Not only a cost factor, but also delivery times. We just got a tool in last week. If it was to be made in the US, we would not have the business from our customer as they had a delivery for a new product that had to be met and they would have used other means to pack their product.

US mold maker in Illinois: Cost $18,000 Lead time: 10 weeks. 8 weeks if we paid a premium Quality: Good No test shots.

Mold maker in Austria: Cost: $17,000 Lead time: 8 to 10 weeks plus transit time Quality: Good. Test shots shipped for approval before mold is shipped.

Mold maker in Korea: Cost: $8600 including air freight and duty Lead time; 32 days including transit time. Quality: Very good. No test shots

Rick, I keep seeing this term "BORG", what does it mean? Big Organization? Alex

Actually, that's North American Free Trade Agreement which doesn't have a f***king thing to do with China. The aim was Mexico and Canada, which created enough turmoil.

Some birds are coming home to roost, though: I've read that some Mexican jobs, imported from the U.S., are now being exported to China, Malaysia, et al.

Another scary part is the export of many, maybe most, customer service jobs to India. Having had personal experience of Dell's version of this, with one of their "fluent" English speakers, I have to hope it doesn't move on to China. It's a horror story from the customer's point of view already.

Charlie Self "Democracy is a process by which people are free to choose the man who will get the blame." Laurence J. Peter

The machine has no nationality.

China would be an improvement in one way--at least they'd have people who could read the manuals for the stuff in their original language--I can imagine some guy in India for whom English is a second language trying to make sense of some of the transliterated Cantonese manuals that I've seen and going postal, or whatever they do in India when job stress removes sanity.

SNIP . Years

My mom worked as a secretary for the steelworkers union before she married my dad. (Back in the good old days). When she got married the union promptly fired her because her "husband should now take care of her". I really do not think today is worse - and that was a union's attitude.

Dave Hall

Dave Hall responds:

Yeah. There is improvement. My first MIL was a physicist who ended up raising kids and teaching high school. For several years, she got no raise. When she raised a ruckus--this is in the early '50s, mind, she was told she didn't need the money because her husband had a good job.

Total irrelevancies ruled. Some still do.

Charlie Self "Democracy is a process by which people are free to choose the man who will get the blame." Laurence J. Peter

George responds:

True. But what happens if US foreign policy goes against the grain of China or Taiwan? They then refuse to manufacture whatever it is the US needs to create policy, and whoops! You can bet your tuchus we're then going to see some factories and foundries recreated.

Charlie Self "Democracy is a process by which people are free to choose the man who will get the blame." Laurence J. Peter

The large Ace where I live is two different stores. The store on weekdays, where they employ professionals who wait on professionals and on weekends where they employ smart mouthed teenagers to wait on the DIY'er. It's this type of service that makes the DIY'er go to the Borg.

I would much rather deal with the professionals, but unfortunately I have a day job and generally don't have that opportunity. I have switched to a position where we do the 9-80 thing and then get off every other friday. I will go to Ace on Friday, but NEVER on the weekends. =========================================================================== Chris