Date:         Tue, 2 Dec 2014 15:26:18 -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: Rock Auto makes it good
In-Reply-To:  <547e0e06.43a2440a.7c3d.ffffca07@mx.google.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

> For the last windshield I had replaced (5 years ago?), I went to a glass
shop in town.
> It was under $200 as I recall

Last time I needed one I called various auto glass specialists and the
quotes ranged between $200 and $350 depending on who I called, all for the
same glass. (This included a trade discount, but since I'm not a regular
glass customer it only amounted to about $50.). Having installed Bus and
Vanagon windshields myself before, it's something I've learned to avoid. I
have seen professionals crack brand new Vanagon windshields or wrestle for
hours trying to get the last corner to seat completely. Which made me feel
like I wasn't a complete idiot for having done the same thing. :-)  Bottom
line is, for not much more than the cost of the glass alone, I'm more than
happy to let them take the hit instead of me if things go sideways.

As for RockAuto, their prices are low but their catalog is rife with errors
when it comes to Vanagon parts. That's not their fault, it's because they
use supplier catalog data, which itself tends to be less accurate when it
comes to parts for out-of-the-mainstream vehicles. We are constantly fixing
supplier data for exactly that reason. I wish I had a dollar for every time
a supplier sent me a data feet showing a diesel Golf part as fitting all
Vanagons just because it fit diesel Vanagons.  Not to mention coolant hoses
for air cooled Vanagons. :-) The difference is that, while we certainly do
miss something sometimes, we vet the data rather than just regurgitating it
as we get it, so we catch a lot of the errors.  Similarly, there is no
specific quality control program for Vanagon parts. Nobody is tracking if
one brand of Vanagon water pump is seeing a lot of returns and pulling it
from the catalog. (And yes, even the name brands have a bad run once in a
while.) If the part is available at the wholesaler's warehouse, it's on the
website. So the onus is on you to know exactly what you're buying - whether
it fits, and whether it's quality.  

A more long-term concern is that the mass-market online parts retailers only
cherry-pick the most easily obtained parts. Good luck finding an obscure
coolant hose or brake backing plate or whatever, not to mention anything for
a Westy.  Every day the mass-market sites' Vanagon selection shrinks,
because when a part becomes hard to source they simply delete it.  It's not
worth their time to bother seeking specialized sourcing because Vanagon
owners aren't even on their radar. These days that amounts to hundreds of
Vanagon parts a year vanishing from their catalogs.  By comparison,
enthusiast-owned outfits like VanAgain, Van-Café, and myself will spend
hours or even days sleuthing out a single hard-to-find part just to get
someone's Vanagon back on the road.  Every time we do that we lose money, as
the effort to source the part often far exceeds the profit.  But since there
are still the easy orders as well, it all balances out in the end, and as
Vanagon enthusiasts ourselves we take a longer view and are dedicated to
keeping these vehicles on the road. Now, consider what happens if you were
to buy all your "bread and butter" parts from a predatory mass-market
retailer and just go to your specialists for the obscure stuff.  At some
point the obscure stuff now has to be self-funding, which means huge price
increases given the huge effort it takes to source it.  What’s more, as time
goes on and the mass-marketers continue to drop Vanagon parts, more and more
parts will fall into that "obscure" category.  In the end, a few bucks saved
now means a lot of money spent later. And that's the best-case scenario. The
worst-case scenario is that weaker specialists get squeezed out of the
market, leaving few sources for the obscure parts at any price (and
eventually no sources for some parts). If you want to see what happens when
a mass-market predator utterly destroys a specialty industry, just try to
find a local independent book store.  

Ron Salmon
The Bus Depot, Inc.
www.busdepot.com