Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 03:08:15 -0500
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: why does everyone treat the list vendors as "BAD GUYS"???
In-Reply-To: <2bd.3e9b3af.31095dcb@aol.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> i know ron, ken, jeff, and some orther vendors will read this
> and agree.. they might be afraid to say it but im not.
Thank you for the words of support, Chris (and others).
I have been on this list for roughly a decade, since shortly after its
inception. If anyone thinks that "busdepot gets negative vibes more often
then anyone else" as someone said today please go back and search Bus Depot
in the archives for the last decade. I will proudly stand behind my
reputation here and elsewhere. Despite the fact that experts say that a
dissatisfied customer is 10 times more likely to comment publicly than a
satisfied one is, positive comments about the Depot in the archives far
outweigh negative ones.
You all know my personal email address. As I have said before, please by
all means email me if you have any problem with or question about a Bus
Depot order. If there is a problem, as many here will attest I will bend
over backwards to make things right. Unfortunately, a small percentage of
people insist on dragging things onto the list as a substitute for simply
calling or emailing to find out where their order is, reporting a shortage,
or whatever. I don't understand why this is. It is unneccessary and unfair.
Sometimes I have to wonder how these same people would feel if the list
vendors treated them that way. For example, if your credit card declined on
an order, should I call you directly, or should I just post "Joe Shmoe has
bad credit" here on the list instead, and then sit back and wait for you to
see it and call me? While that might be an effective way to get your
attention, it would sure be incredibly rude, not to mention a waste of
everybody else's time.
What frustrates me in this thread is the absurdity of some of the
complaints. I have no problem with taking my lumps when they're deserved.
And sometimes they are; we're all human, and I've screwed up a few orders as
good as anybody over the last ten years. But jeez, give me a break here!
One person gave me a whopping 8 minutes (!!!) to reply to an email about his
order status (that he sent while we were closed), before posting here that
his email had gone unanswered! Another recently complained about delivery
speed, when his order had shipped the very day he placed it. I guess he had
expected us to ship it the day BEFORE he ordered it, perhaps? In a third
case, my store manager spent nearly an hour trying to help a list member
identify the part numbers of several small parts he needed from the Bentley
manual and get them from VW for him. This is hard to do by phone, and
despite both parties best efforts, two small parts were overlooked. I can
appreciate the list member's frustration, and can even accept some
responsibility for the employees' failure to fully understand every part he
needed. (Incidentally, the local VW dealership missed the same parts, so at
least he was in good company.:-) But this did not call for the list member's
response, which was to verbally abuse several employees (repeatedly calling
them "stupid"), and then post a "warning" about the Bus Depot here on the
list. Is that fair?
It's easy for people to be "armchair quarterbacks" when they have absolutely
no clue what is involved in making a living supplying parts for a vehicle
that Volkswagen themselves, not to mention pretty much every major
aftermarket parts manufacturer, has pretty much forgotten about. Nobody ever
got rich selling Vanagon parts. You have to run very lean in order to
survive, and you have to love doing it because there are certainly easier
ways to make a buck. If I aggregate the various comments in this thread and
its predecessor, to satisfy everyone's combined expectations, I will have to
provide an Amazon-like website with real-time live inventory; hire so many
employees that they can literally stand around waiting for orders to come in
so that every order leaves the building within hours, quadruple my warehouse
space so I can keep all 15,000 Vanagon parts on hand at all times; hire
trained Volkswagen mechanics to answer the phones (which of course should
all be toll-free); and answer email within hours if not minutes. I'd love to
do all these things and then some, believe me. But this will cost a few
million bucks. Who will pay for it? Do you know how expensive your Vanagon
parts would be if I passed that cost on to you? And if I didn't, I'd be out
of business; there simply isn't that kind of markup in Vanagon parts.
No list vendor will ever have the resources of a superstore. The realities
of trying to keep quality high, prices low, and still make a profit on parts
for a relatively obscure vehicle place strict limitations on staff size,
back-end expenditures, etc.. The ones who don't recognize this don't
survive. (Take a look at a ten year old copy of Hot VW magazine. How many of
the advertisers are still in business today?) So yes, sometimes your ground
order may take an extra day, because we're a small shop and may get
overwhelmed during a particularly busy week. Sometimes an item may be
backordered, because despite our best efforts (which may involve calling
dozens of sources before resorting to backordering your part) we simply
couldn't avoid it. Sometimes you may have to call us on your dime, or wait a
day for an email reply. Sometimes we will even make stupid mistakes because
we're human, but we will always do our best to fix them if you let us know.
We are completely upfront about our delivery times, stockout policies, etc.,
explaining them in detail on our website. And of course we try very hard to
avoid any of these inconveniences, because we find them as frustrating as
you do. We want every transaction to be as smooth as ordering a toaster
from Amazon. But Vanagon parts are not toasters, and sometimes even with
our best efforts there can be circumstances that nobody can control.
Unfortunately, that is the nature of the beast.
Sorry for the rant.
- Ron Salmon
The Bus Depot, Inc.
www.busdepot.com
(215) 234-VWVW
_____________________________________________
Toll-Free for Orders by PART # : 1-866-BUS-DEPOT
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