Whats better?
 

Hey Ladies and Gents,

I have a question I was hoping you guys could help me answer. It is more a topic of debate I suppose.

When looking for a parts supplier, OEM or performance what do you look for?

If you had to choose between rock bottom prices?

or

Higher prices with customer service, free technical advice and free extended warranty for 3-5 years depending on the type of part?

I am curious everyone's input.

Thanks

I guess it depends how far apart the prices are and the reviews on everything. If its cheap but gets good reviews I usually still give it a shot...

Hmm, interesting. Thanks for the input.:thanks:

Higher prices with customer service, free technical advice and free extended warranty for 3-5 years depending on the type of part

That.
I hate bad customer service. I've had a bad customer service experience with XXR's and i'd simply never buy them again due to the shitty customer service. A warranty is great and free technical advice is a plus.

There's a speed shop near me that sells the oil i use, supplies parts i'd buy, etc. But i'll travel even further to buy from another place, such as No Limit Motorsports, they're 30 mins from me and i still rather go there because they aren't douches.

I am curious on what you mean by douches lol. Owning a shop is being in the customer service industry. How do some of these places act for you to feel that way toward them? Are you speaking from a manufacture stand point or an independent shop? No manufacture warranty's parts for ever a year, with few exceptions. I am speaking of a independent shop providing a warranty past the 1 year to extend into 3-5 years.

If you don't mind me asking?

I'm working with a vendor that sent me a defective part and made me pay to ship it back to him. To me, that's bad customer service if I'm not reimbursed for the shipping costs.

I hear thats one of the nightmares of dealing with bottom dollar vendors. They never want to take returns. Did he offer to pay the shipping once it was found defective?

When you go into a shop to buy something and they act like you are bothering them. That's one. Or when they tell you one thing on the phone, then when you get there, they say another thing.
I'm speaking on both points, they can both have shitty service. I've experienced both.
Any extra warranty is good, on any part. Unless you have to pay for that warranty, which depends on the product, etc...different argument.

I've talked about bad experiences before on here, i'll link to one. Though it's more so a place that offers services...

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=61843

Still in the process of working with him. I sent him photos of the defective item not working. I had to jump through several hoops and consistently stay on top of him to get him to send me the address to ship it back to, but even then he hasn't offered to refund shipping. We'll see how it turns out. If he's willing to cooperate, I'll give praise, but if not, I'll be letting people on the forum here know.

What are you selling?

I don't want to list my site or what I sell since I am not a supporting vendor. Besides I think my prices are too high lol. I deal mainly with Euro cars but was curious what the JDM market opinion is.

I asked this question on a Genesis group and it was almost unanimous rock bottom prices and they didn't care about customer service, tech info, or a warranty. The FRS/BRZ group I asked were 50/50. All the Euro guys I asked were unanimous for service, tech info and warranty.

In all honesty I don't offer free shipping unless its our own error. I figure you are getting a new part and I always offer free shipping to you anyways, even on the replacement. If its a defect out of the box I might consider it. Other then that there is no hassle.

I would give this guy the benefit of the doubt. A lot of these guys that sell rock bottom are literally only making $20-50 dollars per part. If he pays for shipping he takes a loss. Its the nature of the beast.

You get what you pay for.

It is not absolute, however, it is a very big indicator of performance and support generally speaking.

For example: I bought a cheap sports car, its not going to be on the level on a 911.

Please excuse me for making a generalisation (I used to be the CFO of the national importer for MB and Porsche in several Asian countries):

European cars, especially upscale ones, are different from Japanese cars. Even the most expensive European marques, they suffer frequently from numerous big and small faults. And therefore, owners of European cars are very wary of quality problems.

Japanese cars, even the cheaper models, are supposed to be trouble-free in the first five years of service or longer. They generally have a much better record of reliability. Since reliability is already presumed to be there, owners of Japanese cars just naturally focus on price for parts. But that doesn't mean owners of Japanese cars care not about parts quality, only that they assume quality should already be built-in.

If I won the lottery tomorrow I would still prefer my cheap sports car over a 911. Value is in the eye of the beholder. I never believed in the saying you get what you pay for. Look at how many expensive POS Cadillac's were made in the 80's/90's.


"A sucker is born every minute", applies to all price ranges.

This is relevant and important. If you're buying something that everyone else is selling and it's self explanatory, and it doesn't really require customer service to answer questions, then I'll probably go with the lowest price. Taking my money and shipping something doesn't require customer service.

However if you're selling something that entails questions, ay sort of customization, frequent supply issues from the factory, specialty products, etc, then customer service is pretty important.

http://www.valkyriemotorwerks.com/

I think it's odd that someone with a new business would be asking people too choose between cheep or good customer service. These days, with the damage the internet can do to your business you damn well better offer both.

Don't attack him so easy, he's just trying to get a feel of the market.

The Euro crowd is different then the JDM crowd, he has good points.

I agree with him though, I don't see why it has to be mutually exclusive. Competitive prices can be had with good service.


I'm from the "euro" crowd (BMW/Audi) and we had many vendors offer good products with excellent customer service at prices lower than equivalent products here.

It depends on what you're buying. Which is why the price matters so much...when you pay less for an item you're less concenred with the company reputation or customer service because the risk vs. value ration is lower. When someone is buying something like a turbo, high end wheels, axles, complete exhaust, etc. they're paying more and the risk increases. The point is to have low prices on everyday items, shift knobs, bare LEDs, lugnuts and mid-way prices on higher value items and promises of returns or tech support for those items, i.e. installer locator widget on your website. You can also win people over when something small is included as a gift with a larger item...you just dropped $3k with our shop here's some free dress-up washers.

You can probably find a case study on Crutchfield.com if you look around online, they follow this model.

Crutchfield is so inflated over ebay, I haven't ordered from them in 15 years.


I think if a product is of high quality, customer service is overrated.

So if you buy some unobtanium JDM part that happens to be the one QC failure you don't care if the seller tells you to FOAD? The WWW is full os busineeses that sell the same things. What makes one stand out over the others?

Depends what you're selling.

If it's something performance-oriented and expensive (like a header or custom tune), then I'd definitely want good technical info, warranty, and customer service. Not to mention a product that performs well.

But if you're selling something cheap like a knock-off lip or side-markers, I wouldn't expect much technical info or customer service on that.

I asked "what are you selling" but I should have phrased it like this. DS asks the right question.

"What is being sold?"

The OPs question of cheap vs expensive cannot be answered in it's original form. More input needed.

I think with a header needing customer service is like needing customer service to buy an alternator. For a header you need good reviews from other customers. If you need support then the problem is the quality of manufacture or design issues.


For a tune yes this is a 32 bit ECU with DI, we will need shops with good customer service for many years on that one. Right now we have a supply/demand issue with tuning. Too few expert tuners are "interested" in the platform. I was heartbroken a bit when Delicious said this platform is relegated to weekends only for them.


I think I posted a year ago that we really need a company to sell a header + tune for a reasonable sum with good support, I was amazed to see Shiv's product hit the market at just the right time. That's a real good thing for these cars.




The amount of after market interest overall for this platform has been amazing, but I'm waiting for things to settle down to where support isn't a big issue, plug or bolt-on and play. Couple years we'll see that.

You can buy parts from hundreds of places. Some things I want as cheaply as I can get them, but those are the things that get tossed when they break. For car parts, gun parts, bike parts and the like I'll make the effort to buy local or to buy from the shop that gets stellar reviews for service.

There are too many guys sitting in moms basement selling parts at 3% profit margins that undercut each other. These are the same guys who once a return is needed, a part fails or any tech help is needed are nowhere to be found.

They are shut down constantly left and right by their suppliers and the manufactures for MAP violations. They sell parts that should bring in 20-35% profit for 3%. What many of you fail to realize is that of a part fails and needs to be sent to the manufacture, they look at price paid and if the part was sold under MAP the manufacture will often not warranty it.

Guys like this are hurting small business and the auto industry. I was debating stocking more JDM/KDM performance stuff, as my OEM stuff does sell well. But there is no point. I have overhead and staff to worry about. Believe it or not you can't have low prices and top level customer service.

I would much rather stick with better margins, happy satisfied customers that we bend over backwards to please, and staff that loves their job and are treated respectfully. This formula has worked for us and I was just curious if it would work in the JDM market the way internet sellers are these days.

I just had an order put in for a $15,000 performance package because the client was so pleased with how helpful we were helping him choose an intake system a few months back on his Porsche and how to wash his car without getting swirls. This is going into his 458.

You already answered your own question... why reinvent your own wheel?

A company shouldn't have to present multiple images to different groups of buyers. A company should cater its own specialties to its target audience, not differentiate its own messaging.

Having said that, the "JDM" market is constantly evolving. 15 years ago, we had nothing (for the 240SX crowd). 10 years ago, a ton of domestic vendors are trying to compete against established JDM manufacturers. 5 years ago, a ton of JDM vendors are being pushed out by competitive USDM vendors.

I can go on and on...

-alex

Have a price where you can afford to make a good profit to keep your company running as well as providing excellent customer service is what I'd go for.

Anyways aren't euro parts usually more expensive that jdm parts?