Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 16:21:01 -0400
Reply-To: The Bus Depot <vanagon@BUSDEPOT.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: The Bus Depot <vanagon@BUSDEPOT.COM>
Subject: Re: Stainless Steel Coolant Lines Now Available!
In-Reply-To: <19c.3743e5c2.3006ae13@aol.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
George Goff said:
> I was real keen on the idea of replacing those doomed-to-fail
> coolant lines with stainless until I read the disclaimer which noted:
>
> "Country (if noted) is the country in which the manufacturer
> is based. Because many companies now have factories
> worldwide, the actual part could be made elsewhere."
>
> No one cares if the corporate offices of a vendor
> (manufacturer) is in Bumfuck, China, but we ALL
> care if the factory is located there.
First of all, in reference to the coolant lines, the asterisked note that
you quoted from does not apply to them. That note only applies if a country
is listed with an asterisk next to it, just below the part number listing on
the product page. It does not apply to a product such as this one, where I
actually say it's German right in the description. I imported these from
Germany myself and have dealt with the supplier for many years. They are
German.
As for your point in general, in a perfect world I would agree completely.
I'd love to be able to accurately specify actual country of manufacture on
the website for every product. But increasingly over the last few years that
has become impossible, with just about every major company going
multinational. (Even VW/Germany is now shipping products sourced from
Brazil, Mexico, etc.) It's gotten to the point that country of origin can
change weekly, or even faster. I've even received a single pallet of the
identical part number and found three different countries of manufacture on
one pallet! Multiply this by a couple hundred thousand products, and you
can see that keeping country of manufacture info current would be a
full-time job in and of itself.
At the same time, many shoppers do want to know if the listed brand is
sourced from Germany, China, Mexico, etc. Even though these days that may no
longer guarantee that the part is actually produced there, it can still be
useful information. If you buy a ball joint sourced from Lemforder/Germany,
it is extremely likely to be German made, and is certainly German
engineered. If you buy one sourced from Varga, who is Brazilian, it is
almost certainly a Brazilian part. (Not that all German products are
necessarily better anyway, but that's a different issue.) So this
information can be helpful to those who care about such things, even if
admittedly incomplete. At the same time, I felt it necessary to clarify
that this doesn't always assure country of origin (albeit a bit more
succinctly than I have here). This is why I wrote the explanation that you
quoted. I know that people have a distaste for "disclaimers," but the note's
intent really is to inform, not deceive. That's why I put it right at the
bottom of every single product page on the website - not on a separate "fine
print" page that nobody reads, like those "user license agreements" for
computer software.
As manufacturing globalization continues to develop, all parts vendors are
wrestling with this same problem, and I'm sure various solutions will
develop over time. Some are delaying the inevitable and still listing
countries of origin that are hopelessly outdated (a head-in-the-sand
approach, if you ask me, as this globalization trend will not go away). And,
unfortunately, a few are taking the opportunity to deceive. A couple have
started using phrases like "German quality" on products that never were
German made. And one has even gone as far as to trademark a brand name with
the word Germany right in the name - for use on their Chinese-made parts!
- Ron Salmon
The Bus Depot, Inc.
www.busdepot.com
(215) 234-VWVW
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Toll-Free for Orders by PART # : 1-866-BUS-DEPOT
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