Madcow?

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pbernosky

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Anyone having trouble getting response from Madcow? I've been trying to get some replacement parts for a mongoose 38mm, and nobody answers the phone, can't leave a message that lasts for more than a few seconds (which nobody responds to) and can't get an email response from their web support. (well, they responded once after a couple weeks, but now nothing).

/p
 
Anyone having trouble getting response from Madcow? I've been trying to get some replacement parts for a mongoose 38mm, and nobody answers the phone, can't leave a message that lasts for more than a few seconds (which nobody responds to) and can't get an email response from their web support. (well, they responded once after a couple weeks, but now nothing)./p

Phone calls have always been hit and miss. I had luck getting a hold of Mike right around PST opening time.

They always did respond to emails, with some lag.

a
 
Ditto with e-mails. send, wait a day or two, get a response..

I've noticed some others recently seem to be having issues, as seen on FB feeds..
 
I was a late comer by about 10 seconds for the BF Nike Apache. Got in on the second wave and I DID leave a note
In the order that it was OK for me to be on the bottom of the list since we were recovering from a city sewer line flood.
Am a happy camper here and received the collection of parts two days ago. Kurt
 
I just received an order from MadCow last week.

If no luck contacting, you could try placing an order for the cheapest item you can find on their site... Then put a note in the "note" field saying CALL ME I HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO GET AHOLD OF YOU.... and see if that gets you anywhere. I think that's the route I'd take if I had that sort of problem.

In fact, I actually put a note in the notes field (of same order that I received) and mentioned that they left out the switch band for my 2.2" adventurer from Black Friday. Came in the mail no problem. Thumbs up from this guy.
 
Keep in mind that many of these places are small, one or two person shops and that the people running them usually have "real" jobs too. I have never heard anything bad about madcow, so I assume that real life has slowed them down a bit.
 
Anyone having trouble getting response from Madcow? I've been trying to get some replacement parts for a mongoose 38mm, and nobody answers the phone, can't leave a message that lasts for more than a few seconds (which nobody responds to) and can't get an email response from their web support. (well, they responded once after a couple weeks, but now nothing).

/p

Sounds like typical Madcow customer service. Last summer I ordered two long tubes of 29 and 38mm CF and they didn't know the outer diameters. This was for a college level engineering design project for USRC SEDS. We didn't have an outer tube diameter and had to design a nosecone to fit with CAD to high tolerances for a TRA record attempt with 20,000ft waiver. Weeks of shipping dates had to get factored into actual parts being manufactured like airfoils, jigs, and cones. We were on a horrendous project deadline to make Hellfire 22. You bet there was a bunch of cuss words exchanged amongst ourselves about a week of sanding it took to correct issues we knew we couldn't account for because Madcow didn't even know info on the products they sold. It took weeks of email and phone calls to Madcow for ANY response. Miss a deadline fail a entire year of senior engineering classes that was the rule. We drove to three states and launched twice that year, no other SEDS team launched twice. Tim Lehr at Wildman, call a number in busy hours, get a real human response, and sh*t gets done. You need a used casing out of stock by X date? Tim's all let me dig through my collection. He found a 38/480 casing when no else was selling. UTC SEDS bought five kits from Wildman. And motors. I bought two Wildman kits myself after seeing quality was alright. Wildman helped us obtain 3rd at SEDS. Madcow kit quality is better but the service was horrid. Didn't Care for the 10% off when we didn't have product specs or even contact for weeks. I may order a Madcow kit in future but I will expect zero response on service side through them. Free fragments of Madcow tube on Bonneville salt flats we left it there. Can't say enough about Wildman and Apogee they know service.

Tim at Wildman isn't perfect, he forgot a fin in a box, we called next day and he Fedex'd it free of charges. No one is perfect. But when you are spending your money or worse "university" money that isn't yours to several thousand dollars you expect service. Wildman was able to help us meet critical deadlines. That other guy nearly cost us big. We tried to do business with Madcow and he was just anemic on response times to technical specifications about tubes and products. Perhaps most hobbyists go "PRETTY" rocket. We wanted tube outer diameters like we needed them days ago. We had components to manufacture to tolerances that weren't even existing for HPR uses.

I'm a Wildman fan. I respect Madcow Kit quality. The kits there look better. It's a shame the service sucked. I would not trust Madcow to a hard deadline for team projects. My opinion based on previous experiences. It's different outside of competitions when you have several months to wait for answers. We had to just deal with it bro no pressure and assume OD which affected structural integrity nosecone and coupler connections on a first HPR multistage no experience and that was very stressful.
 
Madcow eventually corrected their database of tubing diameters. It just took several weeks. Madcow was professional, it's just slow contact. I just don't trust them to hard deadlines anymore. Madcow product quality seems superior but to me that doesn't matter if service is non existent for weeks. Hopefully Madcow has improved service.
 
Madcow eventually corrected their database of tubing diameters. It just took several weeks. Madcow was professional, it's just slow contact. I just don't trust them to hard deadlines anymore. Madcow product quality seems superior but to me that doesn't matter if service is non existent for weeks. Hopefully Madcow has improved service.


If you expect to spend hobby budgets at a hobby vendor and expect commercial levels of service and reliability you are often going to be disappointed. As stated above many of these smaller companies are run part time by a small number people who also have other jobs or businesses, otherwise they would need to start making a full time wage which would drive the prices up.


Speaking from someone at workshop who has been approached by student groups for various tasks it is usually 100% not worth dealing with. Low budgets, insanely high expectations and due to the low levels of training (they are students after all) there is usually a massive number of revisions, questions, errors and corrections. If anyone manages to help you despite all this I would happily suggest you sing their praises, but I also think it's excessively harsh and frankly quite rude to criticise anyone who is unable to spare the time to assist you in your efforts.
 
Interesting thing is that some really small businesses provide superior customer service. One Bad Hawk provides fantastic customer service, and as best I can tell, it’s just Teddy. As noted above, Tim and Jackie at Wildman are also amazing. It’s just fun to talk with Jackie on the phone. I’ve always received world-class service from Apogee. And from Missileworks. My experience with Mad Cow has been generally good, as well, so maybe I’m just lucky. Seriously, you can expect professional customer service from many very small businesses in this hobby. It’s disheartening to hear of a less than great experience. I’ve had a couple of bad experiences, but I just stop doing business with them without making a lot of noise.


Sent from my iPad using Rocketry Forum
 
We spent about $3,500 on rocketry materials, first time for our university doing entry multistage HPR rocketry projects. Madcow only got about $200. They couldn't answer a simple question about a outer diameter of a product they sold for weeks. All he had to do was pick up the phone, get a caliper ,and put it around the outside of the tube or better yet five or six tubes different and average the value. We just couldn't deal with his anemic response time where weeks meant unacceptable deadline shifts. I chipped in an additional thousand out of a VW engineering internship data acquisition off of robots 12 hour shifts. We had money we needed a businessman or woman with respect to answer usually simple questions. What we didn't have was time. I left multiple emails and messages to Madcow. He actually apologized first. I designed supersonic airfoils on an HPR rocket. We had to manufacture those with outsourcing. We weren't farting around. We had money to burn and needed service. I had contractors give more respect for $50 orders than Madcow gave. And I don't mean to bash Madcow. I wanted to like Madcow but the service was subpar for human interaction.

Plus if he does that to other colleges, they play with ESRA and IREC yearly with double to triple what we spent. Maybe that's niche market to him. Usually IREC teams will have a SEDS program too. We weren't one of those major aerospace colleges, in fact we weren't known at all and last year we just started a rocketry group. Tim at Wildman picked up the phone. He's got our business. There's not even SEDS right now and they want that TRA record so newer team is going for it again. What Madcow needs to learn is how to promptly follow up on customers. That's ridiculous someone suggested buy a cheap another item and leave a note. Maybe what we spent is nothing compared to what he makes, fine. We aren't a major player.
 
If you expect to spend hobby budgets at a hobby vendor and expect commercial levels of service and reliability you are often going to be disappointed. As stated above many of these smaller companies are run part time by a small number people who also have other jobs or businesses, otherwise they would need to start making a full time wage which would drive the prices up.

Bingo!

Interesting thing is that some really small businesses provide superior customer service. One Bad Hawk provides fantastic customer service, and as best I can tell, it’s just Teddy. As noted above, Tim and Jackie at Wildman are also amazing. It’s just fun to talk with Jackie on the phone. I’ve always received world-class service from Apogee. And from Missileworks. My experience with Mad Cow has been generally good, as well, so maybe I’m just lucky.

Nope, not lucky.
Madcow is a perfectly reputable business, from I've placed six (6) orders over the past 24 months. All fulfilled without fail.
One time when I ran into a kit design imperfection, we exchanged a few emails, and they made things right.

I've also had positive experiences with every one of the vendors listed above, and then some.
All good people.

However, I never really expected any of them to answer my phone calls any time day or night. Even Apogee (got their VM too). Some calls do get answered, some answers are more useful than others. I don't sweat it. This is a part-time or after-hours business for many of the vendors, and many prefer to spend days going to launches, or working on something productive without distractions. I don't mind waiting a few days to get my emails answered, or packages shipped.

Nor did I ever ask someone to dig through their inventory, tear open sealed packages, and measure the ID/OD of some random tube.
:smile:

I also try to plan in advance, and like to be flexible about hobby-oriented quasi-deadlines and semi-commitments.


Speaking from someone at workshop who has been approached by student groups for various tasks it is usually 100% not worth dealing with. Low budgets, insanely high expectations and due to the low levels of training (they are students after all) there is usually a massive number of revisions, questions, errors and corrections.

Amen to that.

My better half teaches grad school students (and I myself TA-ed while in grad school).
Some are very bright, some are borderline retarded, but all struggle with time management.
It's always an emergency with them, and they always think their last random thought is the most brilliant and earth shattering brain fart ever.
The other major cultural trend now is that they can't keep their sh#t to themselves. They just have to "share" / brag about every minor inconsequential thing. It's just all about themselves, all the time.

Perhaps that will remind you of someone ?
:bangpan:

a
 
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Andrew,

You have a rather common ability to read a conversation purely in order to give the response you want to. As a general suggestion you should take more time to read, and less time to respond. It will massively improve your interactions with future customers and suppliers in whatever field you end up in. It would also cut your post count down massively as you may be able to write one response instead of three more often, which would in turn mean others take more time to read and consider your posts.

As for Madcow, I have previously emailed asking about things directly related to ordering kits and got responses in what I would consider a reasonable time. I've orders kits and received them in a reasonable time and found the parts to be correct and of what I would consider excellent quality for the price. I don't expect them to do anything outside the realm of what they normally offer, and if I did have an inquiry that was outside that scope I wouldn't be betting my career on the answer. To me that shows poor judgement and planning on your part, not theirs.
 
There were 88 SEDS teams last year. So somewhere between $176k-305k went to various rocket parts just for SEDS. Triple that for IREC and that's a yearly income. The smart business will pick up phone and attempt to answer a question.
 
There were 88 SEDS teams last year. So somewhere between $176k-305k went to various rocket parts just for SEDS. Triple that for IREC and that's a yearly income. The smart business will pick up phone and attempt to answer a question.

Maybe he just didn't want to do bussiness with you. It take a lot more then $200 to overcome your amount of whining and annoyance. Maybe its just me, but you seam to have problems with a lot of people. Or maybe it you and your just rude and unpleasant.

I have had great transactions with Madcow. Michael called me back two days later, and emails are returned fast for a hobby bussiness.
 
Maybe he just didn't want to do bussiness with you.
Maybe. I don't know, Xometry committed an engineering team for three days to RFQ a fifty dollar solidworks component. (I know they lost money on that.) They were on the phone for three hours. But hey it's not fair to compare a NASA contractor that deals with engineering projects and manufacturing firms to Madcow at all. That's just engineering projects. Requires data. Your picture of a product won't do. Technical specs. Some businesses want your business harder than others. Another firm put a thank you card and FedExed an order for free from California. They weren't one or two person operations but multimillion dollar firms. They have bigger orders with BMW, GE, DOD, and yet they still listen. Amazing.

They didn't care if it's a one off order or a full scale I need 30,000 components by next Friday type deal. They treated you with the same respect and tried to answer questions. Guess who got repeat orders. The people that were easier to work with got our repeat business.
 
It take a lot more then $200 to overcome your amount of whining and annoyance. Maybe its just me, but you seam to have problems with a lot of people. Or maybe it you and your just rude and unpleasant.

It took an engineering team three days to compute the price of a component I designed. They complained a whole lot about part geometry and tooling capability. Because I'm annoying like you said.
 
It took an engineering team three days to compute the price of a component I designed. They complained a whole lot about part geometry and tooling capability. Because I'm annoying like you said.
if you came into my shop and acted like you are acting in this thread I would throw you out. There are customers who just aren’t worth it to deal with at any price point.
 
But hey it's not fair to compare a NASA contractor that deals with engineering projects and manufacturing firms to Madcow at all.

So maybe you shouldn't?


It took an engineering team three days to compute the price of a component I designed. They complained a whole lot about part geometry and tooling capability. Because I'm annoying like you said.

It sounds more like you don't understand how to design and optimise parts for both production and use. Like the engineers who plan a H7 tolerance on a relief located 1000mm down a 50mm blind hole.... Hopefully you take the fact it took people ages to deal with your design as a lesson instead of a bragging point.


if you came into my shop and acted like you are acting in this thread I would throw you out. There are customers who just aren’t worth it to deal with at any price point.

So true. Best to avoid being one, best to avoid dealing with one.
 
Actually they printed it as is. The RFQ is a manual pricing mode which requires effort on their part.
 
There were 88 SEDS teams last year. So somewhere between $176k-305k went to various rocket parts just for SEDS. Triple that for IREC and that's a yearly income. The smart business will pick up phone and attempt to answer a question.

You throw numbers around like this as if all of these business owners inately know this money is out there and are able to capture it. Smart businesses are servicing their existing customers, not chasing new work because some petulant students have a bunch of someone else's money to spend. Just because you have a semester deadline doesn't mean everyone else has to drop what they're doing to service you. Those multimillion dollar companies who did help you didn't do it because they expected to make $50 off of you. They did it for goodwill, because they can. Small businesses don't always have that capacity. They're already working their asses off to put food on their table. I seriously doubt Mike ignored you on purpose (then again, maybe he reads the forums too :wink:).

You'll (probably) get great customer service from any business that has the capacity and resources to do so. Tim helped you because he could. Yeah, he's a great guy and all, but I bet if he were completely slammed, it might take longer to get a response from him too. That's just speculation on my part. I don't know how his business is set up to deal with such things. I'm sure Mike would love to answer the phones and emails, but I'm guessing he's busy stuffing boxes and checking orders against inventory.

Nobody gets into a rocket hobby business because of the easy money. They're in it because they're enthusiasts too. Many of them are growing these businesses from nothing and that takes time. Mike is probably a one man operation. He's got a lot of great products and he's adding more (Polecat, is it?). His business is growing, and that means he's busy. That's a good thing for all of us in the hobby.

These guys are not faceless overseas corporations. They're enthusiasts like us, trying to make a living doing something they enjoy. I don't expect them to have a 24/7 customer service hotline. Some, like Apogee, have grown to the point where they do have that capability and that's awesome, but others aren't there yet. That's ok by me. I choose to be a good customer and keep buying from the people who carry the products I want, and wait patiently for those products to arrive.
 
Another point, which we don't know, and one I suspect of the poster on FB..

We don't know how the exchange went from his (the poster's) end...

We all have / had a friend who has a short fuse. and some shorter than others! and while they may be sweet to us, you hear them on the phone or in an e-mail, and term term 'rip you a new one' come into play.

Some inquiries are just rude, vulgar language, immediately bashing & insulting the product / company. Others start insisting replacements, discounts, immediate overnight shipping at their cost, etc. And still others are laced with threats..

These calls & e-mails get remembered fast. And while the sender might think they are being stern & 'within their rights', they're just coming off as, well, you know the term.. (We also, have all dealt wit them at one point or other..). Yeah, you're mad at the time, and you want it to be fixed, and feel jiped, jilted, etc..

Now, In no way am I implying the OP or anyone here has done that. I've just seen it in a few paces at various places I've worked, and from the odd friend or two..
 
Needs to know the OD of a tube down to the micron......fillets look like gravel.

Nearest two thousandths would've worked. My L-1 fillets were gravel. SEDS rockets, Dillon did those fillets which came out very smooth.
 
We have gotten way off topic here and I am also a part of it. A certain poster seems to have that effect on people myself included. Let’s keep it clean so the OP can get the info he was looking for. Thanks for being it back to the original intent of the thread Bat-mite.
 
I've always had great service from Madcow.

There are rumors that Madcow is acquiring at least one former rocket mfg. that has closed down. This would be a real win for us all. If the rumor is true, I'm sure that Mike is busier than the proverbial "one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest."
 
It took an engineering team three days to compute the price of a component I designed. They complained a whole lot about part geometry and tooling capability. Because I'm annoying like you said.

Didn't an epoxy vendor refer you to a competitor after you told him the specifications were a matter of life and death?
 
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