DealersEdge Professional Forums

has anyone tried to bill the SA's for part of GM's 35% restocking fees?

I'm am looking at docking the SA's commissions 5%, the same amount that they make for selling, on any returnable parts that has not been installed within 45 days.

We seem to have an issue with getting customers back in for repair work after parts have been ordered and received.

Some of this is due to ordering recall parts in the Quick Lane and that recall is not currently affecting the drivability of the vehicle. So when some of those customers are contacted, they say we will have that done @ my next oil change...which could be months.

But a lot of this is due to the SA's not contacting the customers period. I e-mail the customers daily when the parts arrive, to schedule their repairs.
The problem is that we are only capturing about 30% of e-mails, so not everyone is getting an e-mail.

I have called many customers to notify them in the past, but then, they want to know when they can come in for service. So I have to transfer the call to the service desk, and a lot of the time that call comes back to me because service does not pick up the call, huge inconvenience for the customer.

Another issue is that they rarely pre-schedule apt's for special ordered parts.

also we are not pre-paying for customer pay orders, but a lot of what is not getting installed is warranty and recall parts, so w can't collect on that.

I am hoping that if we do this it will encourage the SA's to:

TAKE CARE OF THE CUSTOMER.
collect e-mails and current phone #'s
make contact with the customer ASAP to set an appointment
pre schedule repairs for SOR's.(I feel if they do this and follow up with the orders and apts., that this will eventually ease up their work load in the service lane)

Our GM, SM,and myself have discussed this,and we all seem to be onboard.
The SM has mentioned it to the SA's, he was met with a lot of scenario's, of why they are struggling to get customers back in.
Which we discussed, and agreed that we would review those type of situations case by case. (crashed car, traded/sold car, moved, snowbird).

I am just looking for a little input before we jump in with both feet.

The owner of the dealership backs me up on this from day 1. Who ever orders a part whether service , wholesale or body shop you order it you own up to it. That means I charge the 35% restock fee . all the time? NO. I charge the department though and make the Service or Body Shop manager pay for it. They can charge there own people if they like or change there own business practices. Works for us.

olepartsguy wrote:The owner of the dealership backs me up on this from day 1. Who ever orders a part whether service , wholesale or body shop you order it you own up to it. That means I charge the 35% restock fee . all the time? NO. I charge the department though and make the Service or Body Shop manager pay for it. They can charge there own people if they like or change there own business practices. Works for us.

Ditto

Your biggest problem is not pre paying for so parts, you can't on warranty, and really hard if you have a body shop

smoyer wrote:Your biggest problem is not pre paying for so parts, you can't on warranty, and really hard if you have a body shop

We have all customer pay parts pre-paid, the body shop always gets a deposit so if the customer backs out, so sorry. Warranty parts are of course not pre-paid, even so, if the service department never bothers to bring them back in, sorry about your luck, 35% restock fee

I had a big issue with this as well at my dealership. Now no parts are ordered without an appointment. They get 30 days to get the customer in. From then I will charge the restock fee directly to the service department. If the work is customer pay, they prepay, no exceptions. This has cleared up a lot of our issues regarding SPORD parts laying around and cluttering up our inventory. The restock fee isn't always billed to service or bs, but more often than not it is. This has helped here, but it was really bad when I first took over.

thank for the input

i have posted this before on how to get SA's to call the customers with special order parts on the shelf for a long time. i started to work for a dealer in 2006, when i took over, they had over $15,000.00 in warranty and special ordered parts 60 days old. i started calling the customers and most of them said they were never notified the parts were in. talked to the service manager and he said they don't have time to notify the customer. i started calling them back and told them to call the service dept and make a appointment or just come on down. service manager was not happy about that, went to the GM complaining. had a meeting and when the GM found out that customers were not being notified he he was not happy, got rid of over $10,000.00 in 60 days. you need to find out if customers are being notified.

NOTIFYING CUSTOMERS. THIS IS WHAT WE DO, AS SOON AS PART ARRIVES THE SERVICE ADVISOR IS NOTIFIED WITH A SOR PAPER. I WAIT 30 DAYS AND IF THE PART IS STILL HERE I SEND THE CUSTOMER A NOTIFICATION VIA MAIL(USPS) WITH A LAST CHANCE HANDWRITTEN. AT 60 DAYS I AM PULLING SPECIAL ORDERS OFF THE SHELVES. WE DONT HAVE ANY PROBLEM WITH TOO MANY SPECAIL ORDERS