Date: Tue, 9 May 2000 20:55:54 -0400
Reply-To: The Bus Depot <ron@NETCARRIER.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: The Bus Depot <ron@NETCARRIER.COM>
Subject: Re: was fuel tank, now cost, performance, and risk
In-Reply-To: <v03102800b53e174512af@[146.201.210.171]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> The answer to your question will be hard to come by,
> 'cause no one who went the cheap route and had poor
> results will want to admit same.
Actually, my experience is exactly the opposite. Some people buy a part for
$20 that the dealer charges $200 for, and then complain about the
_slightest_ inconsequential difference between it and the $200 part. Yet
when offered the opportunity to return it and buy one from the dealer for
$200 instead, they decline the offer. I'd be willing to bet that anybody
who was unhappy with a part would be quick to complain, regardless of what
they paid.
People expect reasonably good quality at any price, and they have a right
to. Whether the quality will match O.E. depends on the individual product.
In some cases, it will. In other cases, it will come reasonably close for a
fraction of the price. In some cases, the quality is so poor that the part
is not worth buying at any price. The latter is, of course, the type of
"bargain" that I stay away from.
Many aftermarket parts are actually made by original-equipment suppliers,
and are identical to the original part. Others are as good as, or even
better than, original. (Poptop seals come to mind; would you rather pay
$400 for an original one that rusts out in two years, or $50 for an
aftermarket one that doesn't rust?) Still others are pure garbage. You
can't make a blanket statement that all aftermarket parts are inferior, or
that they are comparable to original either. It varies widely. To some
extent you have to put some faith in the vendor, the manufacturer, and dumb
luck. Or you can just play it safe and buy everything from the dealer (and
go bankrupt putting $400 poptop seals on your Vanagon every two years :-).
Parts can be cheaper for a lot of reasons. Sometimes they are built
cheaper. Other times, the reason is market related, such as a closeout,
overstock, bankruptcy, etc. These avenues are where I look first. If the
only affordable alternative is aftermarket, I try to talk to others in my
business to see if they have had good experience with the aftermarket
product before I offer it. I'm careful about offering a product that seems
"too cheap" unless I know of other reliable people who have had good
experience with it.
Is my $139 gas tank as good as a $500 dealer one? I'd be the first to say
that it's probably not. Not that I have had any bad experiences (and I sell
plenty of them), but I'm a realist. This is an aftermarket tank, not an OE
one, and yes, the odds are that at the price it is not quite as good as
stock. On the other hand, is it a better alternative than a used one for
about the same price, with an unknown quantity of rust, etc.? The fact that
I sell a lot of gas tanks indicates that the old ones are failing, so buying
a used one is certainly a risk. If it were my van, I'd opt for the new
aftermarket one, because I wouldn't trust a used one and woudn't shell out
$500 for a new one. But that's me. Everybody makes their own choices with
their own money. Life is a set of compromises, and so is the world of
Volkswagens.
My rule of thumb is that when it comes to a part whose failure would cause
unusually high risk or hardship (such as a water pump, whose failure could
seize your engine, or a crucial brake part whose failure could cause an
accident), I tend to err toward caution and use (and sell) the best parts.
On something far less important such as a turn signal lens, I lean toward
the cheapest reasonable quality alternative (if there are significant cost
savings in doing so). And in between there are many, many shades of gray.
Nobody can be 100% right all the time. But to me, the criterion of a
responsible retailer or mechanic is that they wouldn't sell you a part that
they wouldn't feel comfortable using on their own personal vehicle. While
there are opportunists in any business, I really believe that more vendors
than not tend to think the same way.
- Ron Salmon
The Bus Depot, Inc.
http://www.busdepot.com
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