So heres the deal, I run a musical instrument retail store in Cleveland OH, and have noticed more and more that people have been bringing in price matches from websites that sell stuff way below cost. I mean stupid cheap. I know most of us on here search Summit and Speedway for stuff but the deals arent that great. Sooo I decided to search Amazon.com for giggles, I didnt even know that they sold auto parts. Any way I picked up a $175 shifter for $40 and free shipping. Thats new in a box to my door in two days. I found another similar website today TheFind.com. Quarter panels for $65 interior door board kits for $45. Yeah both websites have some normal price stuff but you can find some deals that are far below any dealer cost. If this is old news I apologize but I have been saving a ton of money in this tough economy and I thought I would pass it on
I want you to sell me a Gibson Les Paul Custom for $40.00... hahaha. Throw in a Twin Reverb and I'll send you a check tonite!
Amazon has people that buy tons of stuff then sell for what ever their markup is flat across the board . They don't price like catalouges do . It's many one shot deals . Kind of like a huge where house with all kinds of different vendors selling through them . I buy a lot off Amazon and get great deals ! I will have to check out that other place . Thanks, Jim
Ill give you a HAMB discount I dont know about $40 for both though.. Unless you can find one hell of a price match
What the heck do you search for on thefind? I'm doing one for 'car' and its just a bunch of stereo junk... I'm all for deals so I'll keep looking
So when these internet whores put you out of the music business because they are selling "Below cost", where will you get the money to buy from them for your car parts? It wasn't bad enough that Guitar Center and Sam Ash screwed up the profit margins, now you have to contend with this. I owned a small chain of music stores for 10 years and am glad I got out before the margins totally went in the toilet. These interenet comapnies that sell at prices like that are spelling the end of the mom and pop or local store, so Johnny gets a guitar from one of these palces and then theres no where left to go and get strings and picks or have a repair done. Or you need another part for your rod, but there's no local Speed Shop since they went out of business because they couldn't compete while maintaining a local business. It's a sad situation and I don't have the answer but I know if I want a new Strat I really want to play it first, becasue they sure as hell aren't all the same. Or if I need a New carb, I don't want to wait and hope that the mail order whore gets it out on time and it doesn't get damaged on the big brown truck. But if the local store is gone, then what?
I quite buying online, got screwed one to many times. I like to support my local auto parts store when I can. Napa gets me pretty much anything I want overnite and when you factor in shipping its usually only 10-15% more.
I've used www.rockauto.com a few times (for parts-store type replacement parts and even some of the older hard-to-find parts) and have had good results. I'd say at least 80% of the time, the prices have been cheaper, even with the shipping cost factored in. Example: I'm putting F100 brakes on my Model A project. I ordered new -Wheel cylinders -Brake shoes -Inner and Outer wheel bearings -Seals -Brake hardware kits, including everything I need to make them self-adjusting All shipped to my door for $157. Malcolm
Not trying to make this political but, cheap is cheap. I care more about supporting my family than my local speedshop. Business is business, Im not trying to earn points for heaven by paying more for an intake. Good mom and pop places will stick around and ones that charge too much will go away. Guitar Center started out as a mom and pop store and Sam Ash is still owned and run by the Ash family. I bring all my price matches into the store first to offer them the business. If they want to do it great they can have my business. If not thats fine too. okay back to hot rodding
In many cases the manufacturers set the prices and enforce them throughout their distributor network. Summit, Jegs etc. can't sell below that manufacturer price without the risk of losing the entire line. The company I work for; http://performanceparts.com/ will match Summit and Jegs but we are constrained by the same manufacturer's rules and cannot legally sell below them on most items. For awhile we were putting a lot of our parts up on Amazon. What we found was that Amazon was screwing up our listings and in many cases putting our items up at 50% to 75% BELOW our cost. Obviously we can't do business like that and had to cancel many orders. I'd also bet that many of you would be surprised to learn how small the margin is on a lot of high performance parts by the time they get to the retail level.
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