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Date:         Thu, 17 Feb 2005 19:28:32 EST
Reply-To:     THX0001@AOL.COM
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         George Goff <THX0001@AOL.COM>
Subject:      Re: OEM *IS* Aftermarket  -- WAS: where is the best buy for drums
              and rotors?
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"

In a message dated 2/17/05 4:10:55 PM, jeff@VANAGONPARTS.COM writes:

<< Funny thing about some of the aftermarket parts: if you look closely, you see where the VW symbol has been ground off or covered up somehow. Basically, it is a OEM part that has been defaced for non-OEM sales. >>

That certainly is a possibility. Although, another possibly is that after a little QC and a dab of statistical analysis the part was declared unfit for VW consumption.

I'll soon have at my beck and call a top notch intellectual property attorney who owes me big time. I'll have to ask her if a lawyer administering a procurement contract would be serving his client well by allowing a vendor to use his client's specification in anyway the vendor saw fit, including to undercut his client's profitable replacement parts business. If such a contractual tenet is not the norm, then maybe she can shine sometime by suggesting it.

OE means "original equipment"; these are the same parts the auto maker stuffed into his car on the assembly line. OEM means "original equipment manufacturer", who is the vendor who made the parts that the auto maker stuffed into his car. Unfortunately, OEM has become part of the arsenal of doublespeak which aftermarket merchants use to hawk their goods. The aftermarket merchant cannot claim that his wares are OE parts because that would be blatantly fraudulent, so he calls them OEM parts. It could be said that he is not really lying because his parts WERE made by the same vendor who made the OE parts for the car maker. But, men have even gone to jail because of the tacit and by calling these parts "OEM" a merchant is tacitly saying that they are the same as the OE part, which is nonsense. As I have said before, vendors maintain OE operations along with their aftermarket operations and never the twain shall meet.

George


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