[DML] Re: price shopping

[Louie G <louie@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Price shopping wouldn't hurt the vendors unless there was one certain vendor who had the lowest price on every available part. Everyone who has been in the DeLorean community for a while knows this simply isn't the case. Some vendors have better prices on some parts, others have better prices on others. By price shopping, I spread my business around to all of the vendors. I would be willing to bet the majority of us here in this online community also price shop via the internet... so we don't waste their time. In this day and age it's much easier and faster to hop on the computer and shop through the vendors websites for exactly what you need. About 75% of my shopping for the DeLorean is done that way. I rarely "waste" any of the vendors time with phone calls.

In response to your comment on all of us cutting down on our phone time with the vendors when we have problems, I have to disagree with you on this also. I've had several instances when I've had something that has stumped me on my car, and the online community wasn't able to help me. When I finally ended up calling vendors, they have said they wish I would have just called them in the first place. Several vendors have denounced the help of the shadetree mechanics in online communities. By sharing advice and such online, we're actually cutting down on phone time and ordering parts, or sending our cars to them for service. A vendors job isn't just to sell you parts and service, but also to help you find out what your problem is so you can order the needed parts from them! Vendors know when they get into this business that it's not all just selling parts and labor... dealing with the general public is part of the deal.

I take offense to your telling me to get out of the DeLorean community if I want to price shop. Last I checked, there was nothing at all illegal about it. There are many of us who own DeLoreans that cannot pay top dollar for every part. It's not about feeling better about ourselves... it's about being able to actually fix the car when it breaks. I find it unfortunate that you feel the DeLorean community must be an elitist one. Some of the most passionate owners I know are young guys like myself who don't have a lot of money. Like Ken Koncelik says, it's us young guys who are going to carry the DeLorean into the future. One day every one of our cars will be passed along to someone else. Why not be inclusive of everyone so interest in the car will remain?

Louie Golden
VIN 5252 Charlotte, NC
Also a loyal customer of all of the vendors!


--- Tom Watkins <dmctom@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It doesn't make sense for any vendor to want to deal with the constant phone calls from people trying to "vendor price-hop"  I think all of our vendors agree that it is time consuming  to handle all those phone calls from people who want to compare every price on every item, get the information and then call the other vendor and try to dicker.    

I take my car to Rob Grady for service and usually drive down once a 
year with my "list"  While at his shop you wouldn't believe the number 
of phone calls Rob gets for advise, parts info etc.....It's clearly a 
large part of his day and he still needs to serve his customers who's 
cars are there as well as getting mail order items ready etc....    I 
wish that we could all stop and try to understand and look at this from 
another point of view.

For those of you pissing off our vendors with your constant price 
shopping tactics I hope you take a moment to realize you may screw it up for all of us so STOP IT! You may very well contribute to another vendor choosing to only serve regular full-time customers and not want to deal with "looky-loo's" who want to feel better about themselves for getting a bargain at the expense of all of us.  Our community is too small to overburden our vendors with this kind of crap.  If you want to pull this kind of thing sell your car and buy a major-brand vehicle with lots of dealerships and aftermarket vendors for you to call up and brow-beat.

That's my opinion and I'm stickin to it!


Tom
#05732  Loyal customer of all our vendors to help keep them all in 
business!!!



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