Unrest at the parts store

[ncautoshop]

As the title says, it appears what had been our main supplier for years is having trouble at their local store.

It started with the loss of their commercial parts person to the competitor, loss of a manager (brought on to straighten the store out) - moved to another store and replaced with a fresh out of training manager, a loss of the commercial sales person that visited the businesses and to top it off a switch in their distribution - causing parts to arrive at 3pm instead of 8am.

Obviously I'm not doing business with them anymore but it sure is a pain in the butt! From write up procedures in our management software to core returns and billing procedures it all works completely different. Anyone else ever experience similar situatuions?

 

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[Joe Marconi]

Sounds like they have the wrong people. A business begins and ends with people.

[alfredauto]

Everyday life around here. We buy from 5 stores, when one store can't get their act together we order from the next one. It seems like when we buy from the same store all the time they get a little too comfortable. It took some work to set up 5 vendors in Mitchell but now its simple to buy from all of them.

[ncautoshop]

I feel one member of management is at fault in this instance - district manager type deal. It's been a pretty vivid reminder for me - working the numbers and pushing for better numbers are great, but your customers make those numbers happen. Never forgo customer service and customer retention while pushing for better numbers. In this case only big volume shops have been taken care of. The smaller shops are now waiting hours on deliveries. We really only have 2 same day options, and we've got world pac. World pac charges shipping which hurts our margins in many cases!

 

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[FROGFINDER]

Another day in "as the wrench turns"

We are lucky to have 6-10 suppliers that we work plus have a full time customer/parts driver on staff.

[John Pearson]

My main supplier is Carquest, and they sure do try hard for me. Right now the manager and his son that work there have cancer, they are down to 2 people on the counter and 2 drivers. Even though they are 12 miles away from me it does matter if I make a 3500 dollar order and want 1 oil filter brought by ( not that I try to do that to them) but they MAKE SHIT HAPPEN.

 

Napa on the other hand I am in between 2 stores each about 5 miles away and I am not a "high enough priority customer" for them to bring out a 2500 dollar block heater order.