Parts Trader..Northeast Launch

[gunner]

I'm using it. It's a super P.I.A. and I ignore most of the requests. There are people who I'm just not going to get the sale from regardless.
Having said that, I kept getting a request to quote, it kept coming, I kept ignoring. Finally someone from State Farm called me and asked if I would submit a quote. I did and thought I blew it out of the water. They bit! Surprised me! I sent a $2500 sheet metal order about 90 miles away, but I sold sold it at no discount.
So people are getting feed up with it already, just because State Farm says you have to play by their rules doesn't mean everyone is.

[Vette Guy]

Have played the Parts Trader game since late last fall, and agree with most of the comments posted here. Great thread. We service 10 body shops on a regular basis, have a contractural agreement with 6 of them dictating price, terms, etc. in exchange for their loyalty (in place before I came on board).

Biggest complaint, we will have to spend $200 a month for Parts Trader on business that we have already earned, and continue to earn each day. IN the 5 months on this disaster we have picked up 3 orders from outside shops that normally would not buy from us, earning possibly enough GP to cover one months subscription.

And the shop managers and estimators HATE the process, a few have commented that Collision Link is no cake walk, but is 10 times easier to use than Parts Trader.

I believe until the shops collectively stand up against this manipulation, it won't go away. Yet, I know first hand that standing up to SF is not easy.

[camaroman]

OK it has been 2 full weeks and I have seen 3 quotes. One from another GM dealers shop and 2 that were on the fringe of the mileage I put in. Sounds like a worthwile proposition to me sofar. My preferred shop hasn't had any State Farm estimates yet, we shall see when he does get one.

[dbuck]

We hate hate hate partstrader. We call it partshater or partsquoter.

I'd love to tell them to pound sand but but my best bodyshops have to use it, my competitors all use it, so I'm forced to as well or just give up on wholesale. I dont discount any more than I did before, but you can really see the aftermarket and junkyard parts making a more severe inroad into the repair business. The poor consumers.

I would love to have the manufacturers tell us not to use it and force state farm to abandon it, but that's collusion. I know they hate it, they just cannot take an official position.

It doesnt VIN scrub, you have to look everything up to make sure the shop didnt make a mistake.
It has a nasty tendency to put aftermarket $ on an original part number, always pay attention.
I doesn't export.
It is horrible time consuming and inefficient, on the shop's end and ours.
Their notifications can be slow, I have received them after or right at the expiration of the quote time.

You can set some parameters, ie: how many miles away can a shop be to ask for a quote, but if I get a quote from some random shop that will never buy from me I just don't bother with the quote.

The only thing this program does is save State Farm money. Its not faster, or better. And I complain to partstrader via email fairly regularly about their crappy program and amazingly enough I get a call from them to see if they can solve my problem. My problem IS partstrader.

I keep bugging my rep about using their lobbyists to try to beat back the partstrader crap. Hopefully some of these lawsuits or bills will actually have results that will make me smile.

[CMayne]

All of you need to sign up for "BodyShopBusiness" on line magazine. State Farm is getting "slammed" all over the place for this BS program. I have been forwarding this to my local area body shops and we ALL should be doing it. State Farm need to take this program along with a bucket of sand and go find a rat hole!
If you want send me an e-mail address and I will forward.

[jdpetey]

And how's this for BS.

Accepted the first order from the ONE Body Shop that we take care of and we sell a part for $66.65 which costs $53.32.

So now we qualify for the usage fee of $19.99. Lost everything and then some.

What a racket.