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Comment by johnnyApplePRNG | Hacker News Reader

Ain't that the truth.

It hit me like a brick when I walked into a Toyota dealership to get some transmission oil from the parts department recently.

The saleroom was luxurious. You could eat off of the floor and check your teeth in it afterward, it was so shiny.

All of the sales people looked tip top.

I felt like I had just walked into a casino.

Then I found the parts desk... a dingy, tiny window in a cramped area in the back of the dealership where I had to stand (no chairs) for literally 10 minutes until somebody was able to even notice I was there.

Seemed pretty clear what their main goal was.

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As a former mechanic, I can explain this a bit. Dealer parts departments aren't really setup for retail sale, they are mainly there to support their shop and commercial customers. I worked at an independent shop; but via fleet contracts we bought a large volume of OEM parts from the local Ford & Toyota dealers. The counter isn't manned because 80% of the parts go to the dealers shop, and the other 19.9% go to commercial buyers.

I would call up the dealership parts department and order something, they would either deliver it or let me know what the ETA was. All net-30 terms, and a stupidly low friction process. Even the chain parts stores have separate phone lines for commercial customers, I never had to hold when buying from Advance Auto b/c there was a different commercial number that they only gave to commercial customers. The garage mechanic isn't really the focus of even the chain parts stores, they make their money on commercial customers.

However, I'm glad they at least maintain the retail friendliness that they do. Try walking into your local Fastenal or Grainger without a commercial account, some of their stores just won't sell to the public. Dealer parts departments have a very similar model to a specialty industrial supplier, where retail sales aren't enough of a priority to really bother with.

And frankly, retail sales take a lot of time for them, since the customers need a lot more help. Half the time, if I was calling I already had the part number available and knew if they needed the last 8 of the VIN number and a $500 transaction only took 2 minutes of the parts managers time.

It isn't a conspiracy, they just prioritize their high value customers way more. Same applies in software. I get way better support from our specialty ERP provider than I do from Google. We pay decent money to Google, but they wouldn't notice losing us as a customer, while the ERP firm would.

It isn't some conspiracy to keep you from fixing your car. That conspiracy is their engineering management doesn't want the cars to be fixable at all, and they want any unfortunate mechanic who has to deal with the abomination to properly suffer. --insert stackoverflow post about using regex for html--

Former ASE parts guy, this is correct. My store used to invoice everything 20 to 50% off for commercial, with a 'value'(what they should charge customers) 20 to 50% over retail.

Simple fact is competition is fierce, a good shop is worth thousands per day, and don't tie up your time. Compared to Jim who wants to explain the sound his car makes, show terrible pictures of nothing important, and buy just one off brand sparkplug...well you see where this goes.

Ok, let me get this straight. If I establish a “commercial account” with a dealer or a napa I get wholesale pricing?

Yep. You need to buy a lot of parts though; we bought 100k/year from napa, which was the smallest account we maintained. The discount varies with how much your shop buys and how good you are at negotiating. Not sure why you have "commercial account" in quotes, wholesale pricing for business customers is available at lots of businesses. Your grocery store likely offers this exact same thing, commercial terms for businesses aren't exactly a secret.

Just to add to your example list, as I house painter, I pay perhaps 50% of what the major paint brands/retailers will charge out on the shelf for most of the products that I buy. I don't have to throw crazy 'volume' at them, but honestly, I'm sure any painter buys substantially more paint in a year than any homeowner.

They provide tiered pricing -- If I tend to buy a lot of xyz, then I get better pricing on it, etc.

Being a reasonable folk, I only mark up a handful of % off my price -- I hunch many in my industry do a similar markup off retail.

Pricing is a very strange world.

Yep! And to your door delivery, free.

As others pointed out, they require a minimum purchase volume typically.

We had one guy who wasn't a business per se, but we made him an account because he spent so much money. He was an enthusiast who was always working on other people's cars. We didn't deliver to him, though.

There is probably a "minimum purchase annual volume" that goes along with a commercial account.

in my experience it works this way with electronic components as well

Dealership makes money selling you parts via their mechanic services, not selling you parts to DIY your repairs.

The parts dept does not want to sell to you directly, like autozone, they want to sell to you via your "service advisor" when you bring your car in for them to change your fluids for you

As a bit of a recent convert to US makes from Japanese makes I think this should be clarified.

US makes (big 3, not Tesla) are just fine selling you parts. Not only are they fine with it they aren't marked up as insanely high as I remember with decades of Honda and Toyota ownership. In fact you can go to AC/Delco, Ford, or Mopar's website and just buy parts directly with lots of diagrams and cheap prices sent right to your home. If you go to the dealer parts dept desk its usually right behind the sales area and they share the same space for the most part. Displaying lots of fancy part upgrades and options you could be purchasing from their parts department.

Its a pretty different experience after 25 years of Japanese vehicles.

Completely agree, Japanese parts are more expensive than Western parts ... but then, having driven Toyota for most of my adult life, and now having switched to a domestic brand: They just do not seem to NEED as many replacement parts.

My Toyotas were built like tanks, they were virtually indestructible, in over 15 years, I had one major repair that I needed a shop for (and that was related to the seatbelt). Now, with my Ford (and arguably in homeoffice, meaning I do not drive that much anymore), it feels the car's more in the repair shop than on the road.

For part costs, depends what part of the world you are in. Toyota is far cheaper than European or US parts where there are a higher concentration of Japanese car owners.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_used_vehicle_exportin...

While some Honda parts are not exactly cheap, many Honda dealerships have these nice parts websites with diagrams and ship direct. https://www.hondaautomotiveparts.com/ is one of the most popular ones, but many other sites seem to be based on the same parts search and diagram system, though each dealer sets their pricing. Actually not sure about pricing for more common vehicles, I've just got 2x first-gen Insights, no not exactly as many of them out there as Civics.

True, those sites are great but they aren't official. I think most of them come from 1 or 2 companies (Southern CA and FL IIRC) under a bunch of domains skinned a bunch of different ways. I used to work for a nissan performance parts place and they were asking me to make them their own site from the parts diagrams they got from disk through some agreement they had with Nissan as a service department IIRC. (a little over 10 years ago)

Anyways, official sites:

* https://store.mopar.com

* https://parts.ford.com

* https://parts-catalog.acdelco.com

I'm not sure how all of them work but mopar the dealerships decide if they want to be part of it. If they do then the website is already made and maintained. If somebody buys parts off of it they will direct the sale to a given dealership based on some criteria I don't know. Maybe just whats closest and in stock according to their inventory.

Ford == motorcraft....

It is telling that the "Big 3" have their own branding for their parts divisions, where I dont believe any of the other manufacturers do?

Most of them actually sold off or spun off their parts departments into separate companies, and then were really pissed off when what used to be a dedicated in-house proprietary system started serving parts for other makers.

It’s like rockets. The cheapest bidder gets the contract, and they make the worst quality stuff that they possibly can, just enough to get them across the line.

If you want actual good quality parts, you have to go elsewhere.

The problem is that the industry works very hard to hide where that “elsewhere” might be, so that you can’t find them and work your way around the system.

I assume you mean the Monte Carlo casino. A previous trip to Vegas made me realise American casinos are just fat people in flip flops.

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