What's Up With MobTown??

So since we are talking payroll now, I had one incident a few years ago when I worked in LA that truly baffled me.

Summer interns arrive to our manufacturing plant located in sunny Gardena, CA in all its...um..."glory"...

Come to find out, they all teamed up and were renting a beach house in Manhattan Beach for a ridiculous amount of money.

At the end of his internship some 3 months later, he comes to the accounting shop and asks, so its my last day and I'm checking out. Is there a possibility I can get paid now?

me: .........wut?

him: Yeah, I haven't been paid since I got here.

me: so...how did you pay your ren...ok, now I'm curious.

*marches down to our scary payroll lady, Jerry*

Jerry, this young man hasn't been paid since he got here. What's up?

Jerry: .........wut? So...how did you pay your ren...ok, now I'm curious.

*pulls W2*

Jerry: WHAT?!? Take a look at this shit.

Somehow the kid managed to get a hold of OUR bank account and routing numbers and put it in the blanks on his payroll form. So his pay was leaving our account and then going right back in. THIS IS WHY YOU HAVE TO ATTACH A VOID CHECK TO YOUR PAYROLL FORM!

So then I had to go to our staff accountant that reconciled payroll accounts, and flip her desk as to how in the world that wasn't caught on a bi-weekly basis.

Turns out she was just plugging the couple grand difference to "rounding"

So at the end of the day, our (trust fund kid) intern got paid, I developed a deep seated dislike for UofMichigan MBA students, and we found enough buried crap that I got to do my first firing with our staff accountant, who more than earned it.

 

I do want to add that I have had good experiences with Mobtown so I don't want my post to come across like I have only had bad experiences. I dont think it's entirely fair to the vendor and I have nothing against Mobtown.

I have two sets of skids from them, the first set are perfect with no issues at all, the second set popped and cracked the welds and I had fitment issues with the transfer case skid; the welds were fixed by a local fab shop and I ended up just DIYing the transfer case bracket because it was just a hassle to get it fixed through mobtown which was the main source of my post. The tailgate reinforcement plate is awesome and has no issues and I have had no issues with the sliders, they have held up to the abuse and when they were damaged in shipping Mobtown sent me powder to have them repowdered.

The lesson I kind of learned is that, the product is received essentially as-is, not worth the time, money or effort to have the manufacturer fix, just fix it yourself or find someone local to do it.

 

I have my own office thank you. :highhorse: Still don't know my ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to 4x4 fab.

 

Rounding?

 

The problem is that Mobtown isn't a high-end custom fab shop they're a standard small batch off-road fab shop who does light custom work for local people. You don't get the red carpet treatment, you get a few dudes in a warehouse making things out of metal.

Take yourself as a perfect example. You're calling multiple shops for a bumper. Each will take a few minutes to answer questions and quote your shipping. In the end, each has now spent 10-15 minutes of their work time and only one of the three will get your business. This is insanely common in this kind of market except 90% of the time, that person won't be buying from any of the three. Now imagine you get 10 of these calls and 50 more emails in a day - it becomes a full-time job.

Then just hire someone to run customer service!

Why? So entitled people who demand responses and to talk to a human can feel good about themselves? Someone running customer service doesn't functionally increase the bottom line of a company working at capacity with a month-long backlog. It's an expense that does nothing more but push out lead times which has its own negative impact.

There gets to be a point where things have to be balanced and right now, the smart decision is to not waste hours a day with the CS hat on to make 3 more sales that will be done in September and instead do the things that allows your company to stay above ground. They've been fairly open about this around here - much more so than companies like Pelfrey - so if you buy from them you already know what you're getting in to.

 

Nailed it..!

 

Not necessarily just talking about MT but this "We’re doing the best we can" is just a lazy excuse for what any business is capable of. It's nothing but an excuse. So busy! Yet seem to have all the time in the world to participate in EVERY armor thread on TW. Got to love the marketing. If you can't keep up with simple communication then stop taking orders and money until you have time for everything a respectable business should be able to handle. I bet those lead times would get shorter to without piling on the back-orders. But I get it, putting money in pockets is more important.

What baffles me, is how the company states they are such a small work force and have work lined up for several months. With such a small work force and a seemly endless back logg of orders, how could a company like this not afford someone who answers emails and phone etc? They are making money. There's money in the bank MONTHS before commencing work on the armor. To conclude, I'm just not sure if MT is actually in over their heads with the work load, or enjoy that cheddar.

 

Oh, JFC.

There is no way I could work in accounting.

Hell, I hammered our accounts receivable team yesterday. I fucking laid into them for being fucktards with our clients. The CFO was not really pleased with my email, but understood where I was coming from and made corrections immediately to their process for hassling clients and operations people.

 

This seems to be a complete straw man argument. No one is complaining about a speck of dust. The OP was asking about spending $1,000 and receiving radio silence for almost two months. So when you say “I asked if he had a thing and he said yes and I bought it”... that’s what the original OP had hoped would happen with him. Whether you’d like to admit it or not, you’d probably have some questions too.

Arguments are much easier if you make everything black and white.... But it misses the point. People don’t need their hand held when they just want an update after spending hard earned and often substantial money. That’s what capitalism is man. If you don’t provide good service and a good product, people will go elsewhere.

As many have already said, Mobtown appears to be a very well liked and respected company. But it’s not perfect. No one is.

 

Ah. The strawman buzzword. My point isn’t whether or not mobtown is x or y. My point is people are like you. And you are not my demographic, thankfully.

I’d ask that you go elsewhere.

 

Oh, it was the day I had DREAMED of since I started there. Nice enough lady, but no concept of manners. Burping during lunch at her desk, singing out loud to her headphone music, and worst of all, SHE MICROWAVED FISH IN THE OFFICE. That should be indictable for war crimes at the Hague similar to chemical weapons.

I had no desire to be an accountant. I studied finance in school to be a M&A crusader. But my last job lumped all us together in the bean counter office. Then my duties just sort of made me an accountant. Now I'm our finance head for the plant

The absurd hilarity of the stuff I see every day you just have to laugh at to cope with. If it makes you feel any better, I too despise AR and AP functions. Something is ALWAYS wrong with those groups.

 

I love doing it to people that use their iPhone's default mail app to check them. It automatically accepts them lol

 

The iSheep did it to themselves. They have no one to blame.

 

Default mail apps suck. iMessage encryption doesn’t not

 

Haha okay pal. Good luck to you.

 

No worries bro

Good thing I have a day job lol.

 

Haha cheers brother

 

This probably has something to do with the fact you clearly don't understand what it's like to run a small business of this nature. A dedicated customer service rep in this situation delivers near zero value. That money in the bank is not income to be spent, it's a promise to deliver a product that has real material costs. What you're describing is a pyramid scheme a la Pelfreybilt.

 

They got back to me and helped, happy customer here!