Vendor way overpriced

[Boss2553 0]

I have been with this company for one month, I am on loan for around 2 years from my company. I was asked to look at some pricing for a repair in an AB plc. Here is what happened; some one took the PLC from the machine to use on another machine. They do not have members to work on PLC here so work was done by outside vendor. So the machine the had the PLC removed was shipped out to a local vendor for repair, put in a new PLC and reload program. The vendor put in a plc and when it was loading the program they said it blew the I/O cards and the sensors attached to them. They are claming a short that they claim took them 12 hours to find in the panel. The panel is about 3x4 feet with less the 20 I/O, I could see an hour at the most but not 12. They are quoting 650.00 each for 1769-iq16 cards, they are around 200.00 each on the net. In your guys opinion how could they blown all I/O cards and devices while loading the plc program seems to me they ought to be charging for a new laptop and fingertip surgery if it was that much of a surge. I need to make justification to lower their charge of 11K 5K for parts and 6K for labor. I am think about asking them for a job at 95.00 an hour and you get 12 hours for a 30 minute job it has to be cake.

[Boss2553 0]

Just looking for the answer how they blew the I/O cards by swapping the PLC out. Seems to be their fault the machine was running fine when the PLC was robbed. Got any ideals of how it they shorted with out taking out the PLC just seems not possible to me.

[jstolaruk 9]

Ask to see the damaged goods.

[TimWilborne 108]

$650 for the 1769-iq16 is high, but that's about the only conclusion I can come to based off of the information provided. $95 per hour would be a decent rate. Sometimes you get lucky troubleshooting a short circuit and see it immediately. Other times it could take all day and 10 different sets of eyes. Downloading a program won't "blow up" the I/O cards, but an output accidentally hooked to a voltage that was higher than the rated voltage could when the program caused it to turn on. Again, this would be strictly speculation. My only suggestion would be to sit down with the vendor and try to work it out. You don't have any permanent staff to do this troubleshooting, so you need to have a good working relationship with your vendor. You need to be able to call him, have him troubleshoot the problem, and be billed later without worrying about the sticker shock. At the same time, your vendor must be able to trust you to pay the bill after they have completed the work so they can proceed with the troubleshooting immediately and not worry with any purchase orders or other paperwork until after the equipment is back up and running. If you can't establish that, then start looking for a new vendor.

[BobLfoot 302]

This is where the lawyers get to have a heyday. TW is spot on when he says you are a captive client of this company given your situation. In the future be sure to carefully define who is responsible for what. After all you probably had an electrical contractor disconnect the equipment at your site and they had another connect it at theirs. Then you also had a shipping company load and move it. That is 5 parties {you, your electrician, the mover, their electrician and them} all who could have caused the fatal short. If you check the 1769-Iq16 manual pg 8/16 it does warn that AC Voltage will damage the unit. "ATTENTION: • Miswiring of the module to an AC power source will damage the module. • Be careful when stripping wires. Wire fragments that fall into a module could cause damage at power up. Once wiring is complete, ensure the module is free of all metal fragments." I saw $228 for an IQ16 and $269 for an IQ16F delivered in two days from RA Website. I would agree with TW on the labor. Three years ago when I left off working for an SI their going rate was $125/hr in their shop and $150/hr on the road. Good Luck and let us know what you learn and what we can all benefit from your learning.

[Boss2553 0]

Thanks for the input. A little background on the machine It is a 110V machine that used a normal plug in. It is small and can fit in the back of a pickup. Just info to understand the size. The wire is not routed through any place hard to get to so the 12 hours seems way over it is a simple machine 2 link I/O pretty basic. They sent it out before I came here and the guy who sent it is gone from the company. The deal was not done right at all. they claim that a removed ground blew everything, I really dont see how unless it was into a power line. I think they landed some wires wrong and want us to foot the bill. I will tread lightley when I meet with them. They sent a bill with an amount only, we asked for a list of work. I think they just threw a price out and now they are trying to fill the bill with fluff.

[ssommers 20]

I agree with TW on the $95/hr labor rate & the difficulty of troubleshooting for a short. I recently spent 6 hrs on finding a short at my secondary plant on a totally unfamiliar machine. The in-plant maintenance had already spent 8 hrs looking for the problem before I got there. The ultimate problem - hot chips had melted thru the insulation on several prox switch cables. I blew 8 fuses before I could nail all the shorted locations. It was a PITA, but fixable without blowing any PLC I/O cards or the controller. They considered me to be really good at troubleshooting, but I was kicking myself for not being faster. $5K could be the price of the entire PLC (including their 30% profit), but $6K would be 40+ hrs of labor (again, adding 30% markup over the $95/hr). That sounds like a little too much for a blown PLC replacement & program download unless you had them test the whole machine in their shop before returning it. Consider this a learning experience in writing purchasing contracts. I work with a couple of vendors that will do a free repair estimate before I give them a purchase order. It's kinda like taking my car to a mechanic - they give me a detailed written estimate and THEN I give them a PO with "Not to Exceed" on it. This protects me and makes them come ask me for $$ if they find a necessary extra repair or time. If you're going to have to do a time & materials PO, definitely put a "Not to Exceed" clause on it. I had another problem machine recently that cost me $5500 for an emergency visit. The machine was still under warranty, but the warranty covered parts only, not labor & travel. Since this was causing 3 entire lines to be down, I didn't even ask the labor price before issuing the PO to get the repair guys here. It was 10 hrs travel time + 10 hrs repair time + milage & reasonable overnight accomodations for 2 people. The final bill looked expensive, but was cheap considering that the tech's arrived at 2am with the system back on-line by noon. I sent them to a local motel with a very grateful heart! Learning to know when to put clamps on a vendor (and when not to) requires experience and sometimes it's not easy acquiring that experience. Good luck in getting them to detail the bill.

[TimWilborne 108]

Generally, I show itemized prices of all parts I used and give the total hours with a brief description of what the problem was. I did have a customer once tell me I needed to give a more itemized description of what I did. I told him if he wanted to know everything I did I would have to charge him for an extra person to write it all down for me as I did it...I didn't have the time. He never asked for it again. When it comes to breakdowns, I've had customers tell me I'm expensive, but never one tell me I wasn't worth it

[kaiser_will 65]

1. Setup a meeting for your people to meet at the site of the vendor with the machine present 2. Come to a consensus as to who is responsible for the failure. Either the vendor wired in 120VAC instead of control power and blew the I/O cards, or someone on your end damaged the machine before shipment. 3. If it is true that the vendor damaged the machine, they might want you to come to a common ground on the repair charges, such as 50% split. Be creative. I highly suggest buying refurbished PLC controls as they often come with the same warranty as new and are typically 50% list. "Grey area" projects are tough. You can also opt to come get the machine, send it to someone else and pay them to do the repair. But if you have Vendor A do the repair, and negotiate a fair deal, then at least they are in for making the system work before they get paid.

[KidPLC 2]

I have been following this post with interest. I like kaiser_wills approach I agree as painful as it may be you are probably better off sticking with them and getting it fixed. Based on the information you have provided, which indicates they have not been backwards in coming forward with an overpriced quote, you will be battling to get them to admitt to any fault. If you decide to go forward with them I would be paying them a visit on a regular basis over the repair job and assessing whether the relationship should continue after this episode or you move onto another vendor personally they would have to be doing an amazing job of getting this machine back on track for me to stick with them. Edited 14 Nov 2008 by KidPLC

[JeffKiper 9]

I may be way OT but is could be worth looking into. I see where you said Ground what if the target plant is using a multi-wire branch circuit with a shared common and the common was lifted off. The voltage would easily climb to 208~240. A little short story. About lunch time I was doing HVAC service in McDonald's when a rookie CCTV guy was wiring a new system in and lifted a nuetral to share a screw terminal. All of the sudden after a loud bang this guy jumps out of the panel and ran to his new panel with smoke rolling out of it. The manager followed with about 4 workers. She made it very clear that the camera was NOT her main concern it was the 5 cash registers that lite up real bright just as the bang happened. With no common return path the the 2 seperate 120v systems became (1) 208V with the cash registers and his new system wired in series. You get the idea. 95hr is cheap. I traveled to a plant 3 hour away to find a short in a sealtite after 15 minutes.They had been done to 2 days.

[controlsdude 3]

been mostly on the vendor side. Pricing for this fix is reasonable. I know if we have to go to site its bascally 1500 a day and some outfits cost 2500 a day. So if these people are working with you I am sure that they want to do future business. If its a he said she said type of deal on who is at fault, then you might want to split the costs. If you want the work done and dont want them to work on your stuff anymore, just issue the PO and dont pay. Dispute it later but get your equipment back in plant and working. Just chalk up to life's experience. But if your saying you do not know if it is your fault and you do not know its there fault then I would just pay the bill. Your decision, just be honest and people will work with you. Just have to watch out for the dishonest people and everyone knows them just ask around.