Parts Trader..Northeast Launch

[jdpetey]

This week we went live with the Parts Trader racket in the Northeast(Pittsburgh).

We only signed up due to the fact that our ‘one’ loyal body shop was required by State Farm to do business with us.

After watching the ‘Webinars’, the selling point of ‘potential’ increased sales, in my opinion, is a farce.

Advantages to our operation always seemed minimal at best. To the ‘repairers’, it would appear as a win-win situation, wherein we, as dealers, see how much will cut our own throats to make the sale.

They sell you on the idea that you, as a dealer, could increase sales that would otherwise be non-existent. As far as I’m concerned they still won’t exist. Suckers will take the bait, only to acquire undesirable accounts that have already burned their bridges with otherwise respectable ‘suppliers’. Good luck with that. 'Potential buyers' will manually discard your quotes, after you may have spent a considerable amount of time preparing said quotes.

One of the quote requests was a body shop that currently buys from a dealership that I formerly worked at. Upon contacting an employee within their parts dept, that I had helped obtain employment there, I was informed that the 'repairer' had recently returned approximately $8000.00 worth of parts, probably paid for by insurers, laying around his shop, looking to double dip, at their expense. Some of the parts were sold almost a year ago. Not a customer we want.

I set the system up to send text messages to my phone in the event I’m not staring at a screen to see if a ‘quote request’ comes up. So far I have received multiple quote requests from repairers that I’ve never heard of, who, in all reality, have no intentions of buying from us, but would simply like to see if their current supplier is selling to them at ‘the best possible price’. If they see lower prices, they won’t necessarily purchase from us, but rather contact their current wholesaler to challenge pricing.

I initially took the hook and submitted the first few quotes until I woke up. Once again, I befell a victim to our ‘marketing’ society.

First of all, I can’t stand the fact that a 3rd party is interjecting itself into an otherwise one-to-one transaction, but secondly, the fact that they expect us to pay for a service that was not necessary for our one-to-one businesses to function effectively.

I will no longer participate in submitting quotes to non-buying customers in the hope that others will also do the same and make the ‘Parts Trader’ interjection irrelevant and ultimately non-existent.

I understand the competitive environment in which we live in, but WE will not succumb to the idea of sacrificing our profits to increase the profits of others. Repairers will not pass on the savings to customers/insurers.

I have no disrespect for the large wholesalers that are running umpteen trucks to sell at deep discounts to inflate their overall total sales figures, but we don’t have the resources to compete, and they can have the good and bad customers that they’ve worked so hard to acquire.

Just my 2 cents,
jdpetey

[Zep33]

Very well stated!!

[possum]

We kept getting e-mails from PartsTrader saying we had to sign up because a repairer in our area wanted to send us quotes. Based on the feedback from this forum and other mgrs I spoke with, I called them and told them to stop sending me solicitation. Then this repairer also called me and said we had to sign up, in order to keep their state farm business. I said we don't do business with state farm, or parts trader, but with YOU, the body shop. I also reminded them that they only purchase from our VW and MB stores, but no GM business, so I wished them luck having to buy everything out of town. Don't call me for paint codes or molding clips or even one part to finish a job. The money lost from losing their business would have all gone to discounts and fees to partstrader.

[CMayne]

I was contacted by State Farm telling me I "needed" to sign up "because of a customer request". I told them to pound sand along with the fact that out of10 of the local Body Shops I deal with NONE of them wanted the third party control. State Farm is getting sued in 3 states already and I hope they loose big time. It is a TOTAL waste of our time and the only one that pockets any extra is State Farm. After chewing the State Farm "Rep." for about 15 minutes he actually agreed with what I had to say with a comment of "I do not blame you for having that attitude and I would not want Progressive telling State Farm how to run their business".

[TimK]

We had to join to sell parts to our own bodyshop that's onsite.

Farce indeed.

I'm not wasting time quoting any outside shops; they're going to buy from the wholesale whores anyways.

[camaroman]

I went to one of the seminars locally and asked why State Farm felt that this was needed and their response was to cut down on parts cycle time. They claim that that they spend millions of dollars on rentals everyday because of parts availability issues and they claim this is the fix. I have one really good State Farm shop and I feel that our loyalty together will keep us in the game. Helping them with the simple things like paint code lookup along with technical information means alot and doing some of their technical mechanical work also helps.

[X476]

I just mark non buying shops as unable to quote and punt them. The first few I did quote I would show no discount percentage and put a note stating all preexisting discount apply. State Fraud and Parts Trader state they don't look at that but I will bet $$$$$$$ that State fraud will be telling body shops they want a parts break, and in exchange they will send them more business. Only reason we do it is for our own body shop. Have found a few work arounds though. Have your shop set the time to 1 hour, most salvage yards are so overwhelmed by this they won't have time to quote. You sell your parts and followed state frauds rules.

[CMayne]

I went to one of the seminars locally and asked why State Farm felt that this was needed and their response was to cut down on parts cycle time. They claim that that they spend millions of dollars on rentals everyday because of parts availability issues and they claim this is the fix. I have one really good State Farm shop and I feel that our loyalty together will keep us in the game. Helping them with the simple things like paint code lookup along with technical information means alot and doing some of their technical mechanical work also helps.

Got the same input from the State Farm guy on the phone......... "What a friggen joke". The one local Body Shop (No. Calif.) received a estimate through the program from some Dealer in Illinois. They faxed us a copy and by the time we did GM's bump on the parts there was less than $20 difference on a $1300+ parts estimate. The guy was shipping "freight free" (LMAO) on door skins and fenders. I asked the Body Shop "who was going to pay the freight back when they show up damaged, State Farm maybe". He laughed and Reiterated " hell we can't even get good sheet metal out of the local PDC. BTW we did get the order. How much "rental time" does State Farm think they are going to save shipping parts across country. Basically State Farm has their head so far up it they can't see any light. It might work in the metro areas but that only incorporates about 20% of the countries area.

[Bailo1]

We had to join to sell parts to our own bodyshop that's onsite.

Farce indeed.

I'm not wasting time quoting any outside shops; they're going to buy from the wholesale whores anyways.

We WERE in the exact same boat! But, my body shop manager decided to retire at the end of last month (somewhat due to all the bureaucratic crap that's going on like this PartsTrader deal) and when he did, ownership said no more internal body shop. We're turning what was the body shop (pretty small) into an express service lane. It was fun making the call to Parts Trader and telling them goodbye. It's also been nice seeing my daily email count go down by half as I'm no longer receiving requests for quotes from shops I've never done business with and never will.

[CMayne]

" It's also been nice seeing my daily email count go down by half as I'm no longer receiving requests for quotes from shops I've never done business with and never will."
Bailo: Thats the other side of the coin I did not even think about. I have had 3 accounts "stiff" me over the last 20 years. All of them off to the court room and then try and collect your money. 2 of them were Body Shops. This means if you are going to sell cross country or even cross state you are going to take the additional bitting (3-4 or 5%) of a credit card or risk getting stiffed from someone you do not even know.