Date:         Tue, 21 Sep 1999 20:41:23 -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: VW Australia v Busdepot
In-Reply-To:  <004a01bf047e$13752d20$4925480c@att.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

> Most mechanics/shops consider the profit on parts as part of their normal
> income.  If you have a shop that's willing to use your parts, consider
> yourself blessed.
>
> We tend to think in terms of the consumer (logical, since that's what we
> are), but it helps to put yourself in the other guys shoes
> occasionally.  If you bring a widget for your mechanic to install and it
doesn't work,
> typically you're going to expect the mechanic to in some way warranty that
> widget, at least to the extent of troubleshooting it.  Reasonable?
Probably
> not, but most shops will do it and write off the loss.
>
> This is not to knock you or your shop, just to remind us all that
> the shops are in business to make a buck or two here and there.


Most repair shops count on their parts markup as part of their profit.  In
other words, if they didn't supply the part, they would have to mark up
their labor charge more in order to make the same amount of money on their
repairs.  How much they mark up their parts (or labor) varies tremendously.
Some are greedier than others. Also some buy the parts at lousy prices.  And
some pay their mechanics more than others do.  Sometimes when it comes to
labor rate you get what you pay for; other times you can pay top dollar and
get a mediocre job.

Since we at the Depot no longer do repairs, we recommend a local VW
specialist (Lehmanns Auto, Bechtelsville PA) for installation of our parts
to local customers.  The proprietor, Tim Snyder, is perhaps the most
professional and honest mechanic I have had the pleasure to know.  To give
you an idea of how it often works with repair shops, I will share with you
his take on the parts situation.

Tim will freely admit that he pays more (sometimes considerably more) than I
do for the same parts.  I have the time to shop 15 importers for the best
price on a Vanagon exhaust pipe.  He doesn't.  He has a garage full of cars,
and his main concern is troubleshooting and repairing them, not sitting on
the phone all day shopping around for parts prices.  Besides, if he pays 30%
more for a Vanagon exhaust pipe, it's still a part he's only going to sell
maybe 3 times a month, so in the scheme of things it isn't really that
important to him.  I sell that part 3 times a _day_, so it's much more
important to me to find a good deal than it is to him. (Not coincidentally,
that has a lot to do with why I pay less; I buy the part in much higher
volume than he does.)  Like I said, his main business is repair; mine is
parts.

He buys from one or two suppliers.  If their price is twice as high as
someone I might have found, he probably won't know it because he doesn't
have time to shop around.  So even if he were to mark up his parts at the
same rate I do (and I'm sure he marks them up more than I do), they would
still cost the customer more even if he wasn't making a penny more on them
than I do.

On the other hand, he stands behind the work, parts and all.  If he installs
a defective part that he supplied, he not only replaces the part, but
reinstalls it at no additional labor charge.  This gives his customers peace
of mind. It is also, of course, built into the price he charges for parts
and labor.

Tim's view of customers supplying their own parts is that it's sort of like
bringing your own steak to a restaurant and asking them to cook it for you.
On the other hand, he gets a ton of referred business from me so he's more
than willing to make an exception for my customers.  He generally charges
maybe an extra $5-10 an hour for his labor to make up for the profit he
loses on the part.  Since I often sell the part at retail for less than he
buys it for, this still results in a large savings for the customer.  His
official policy is that if a customer-supplied part fails, he won't remove
and reinstall it for free, which is more than fair, although so far no
failure has ever occurred.  Since he and I both generally buy the
better-quality brands, the failure rate is extremely low regardless.

If your garage is willing to allow you to supply the part, even if this
means charging you a little more labor, often you will find that it works
out well to your advantage, just because garages often pay much more for
parts than you pay me for them, even before they mark them up.  A direct
importer like me is often a couple of rungs up the "food chain" than a small
garage is when it comes buying parts.  In other words, I sometimes buy a
part directly from a manufacturer, whereas a garage buys it from a small
distributor, who bought it from a larger distributor, who bought it from the
importer, who bought it from the manufacturer (each of whom marked it up
along the way).  If your garage will not allow you to supply the part, you
may be able to convince them to buy the part from me and then mark it up
accordingly.  If they save, say, 20% buying it from me rather than from
their normal supplier, then hopefully you will see that savings as well.
Some shops are very reluctant to do this ("I only buy from suppliers I know
and trust") but typically if they call and learn that yes, we really _are_
shipping the real Bosch, Sachs, Leistritz stuff, etc. for that price, not
Brand-X, their fears of receiving shoddy parts are allayed.  If you supply
the part, the shop may say, as Lehmanns does, that if it fails, they will
not provide free labor to replace it (even though I will of course provide a
new part for free if it is within the warranty period, typically 6 months to
a year).  There you have to weigh your options.  Defects are extremely rare,
typically less than 1/10 of 1 percent. So your odds are very good. But then
again, someone has to be that 1 in 1000.  That's a judgement call you must
make, which may depend on how much you are likely to save by supplying the
part (which is often quite a bit).

Just my $.02...

- Ron Salmon
  The Bus Depot, Inc.
  http://www.busdepot.com