Shrimpbox
Gold Member
This is how some of my days have gone in last week. This is a little bit inside baseball but bear with me. I have to repair two main Caterpillar engines. One of the mechanics called the cat dealer and said he needed six cylinder kits for a 3400 series engine, a ubiquitous part. The rookie parts guy at Caterpillar, not Bubbas Cafe and Auto Parts Store, thought he was talking about hydraulic cylinders, not engine parts. He knew nothing about what the mechanic was talking about, claimed it would take two months to get parts because there were none in the country. It went downhill from there. I usually get parts the next day.
The other mechanic ordered parts a week ago and I drove six hours to pick them up. One part was on a truck that crashed and Caterpillar doesn’t know where the other part is. That mechanic has been dealing with incompetence at his dealership for months. Caterpillar is off the rails. parts are where machinery builders make their money, and to ignore this facet of their business is idiotic. I also had to stop at a John Deere dealership where I whined to the employeeabout cat. He said they had been having similar problems. When I asked what he thought the problem was he said they are just trying to do more with less.
Some of these problems could have been foreseen. The trend has been to replace older knowledgeable parts people with cheaper, younger, more ignorant college grads. It is a disaster. The productivity and efficiency of the parts counter has collapsed. The savings in pay are dwarfed by the loss of sales. And to compound the problem Cat is not even stocking the needed parts. The new guys are taking thirty minutes to do what the old guys did in five. The loss of my productivity, my mechanics, and my businesss is considerable. And this is being repeated thousands of times by small business.
Along the same lines, Sams Clubs are now ordering stock from headquarters instead of letting each store place its own order. This is another cluster. Items we get every week are now maybes, and the store decided to reorganize their stock and move everything to a different spot. What Einstein came up with that?
The point of this rant is that these major corporations seem to be so interested in cost cuts g they are cutting their noses off to spite their face. There is no customer service anymore. Headquarters seems to think the answer to every problem is to raise prices, not address the problem. Experience is not created in a vacuum. The fact that Cat can show so much incompetence at the point of contact is mind boggling. These major companies had better lose the tunnel vision before they cause irreparable harm to the economy. I can’t believe it’s taking this long for these companies to recognize these problems. It does not speak well for upper management.
I’m just aggravated and tired of being hamstrung by companies that cannot do their jobs. caterpillar used to be the gold standard. Not anymore.
The other mechanic ordered parts a week ago and I drove six hours to pick them up. One part was on a truck that crashed and Caterpillar doesn’t know where the other part is. That mechanic has been dealing with incompetence at his dealership for months. Caterpillar is off the rails. parts are where machinery builders make their money, and to ignore this facet of their business is idiotic. I also had to stop at a John Deere dealership where I whined to the employeeabout cat. He said they had been having similar problems. When I asked what he thought the problem was he said they are just trying to do more with less.
Some of these problems could have been foreseen. The trend has been to replace older knowledgeable parts people with cheaper, younger, more ignorant college grads. It is a disaster. The productivity and efficiency of the parts counter has collapsed. The savings in pay are dwarfed by the loss of sales. And to compound the problem Cat is not even stocking the needed parts. The new guys are taking thirty minutes to do what the old guys did in five. The loss of my productivity, my mechanics, and my businesss is considerable. And this is being repeated thousands of times by small business.
Along the same lines, Sams Clubs are now ordering stock from headquarters instead of letting each store place its own order. This is another cluster. Items we get every week are now maybes, and the store decided to reorganize their stock and move everything to a different spot. What Einstein came up with that?
The point of this rant is that these major corporations seem to be so interested in cost cuts g they are cutting their noses off to spite their face. There is no customer service anymore. Headquarters seems to think the answer to every problem is to raise prices, not address the problem. Experience is not created in a vacuum. The fact that Cat can show so much incompetence at the point of contact is mind boggling. These major companies had better lose the tunnel vision before they cause irreparable harm to the economy. I can’t believe it’s taking this long for these companies to recognize these problems. It does not speak well for upper management.
I’m just aggravated and tired of being hamstrung by companies that cannot do their jobs. caterpillar used to be the gold standard. Not anymore.
