Re: Catering to used-car buyers?

["Jouko Haapanen" <joukoh@vtoy.fi>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Ian J Haseltine <jim_haseltine@email.msn.com>


>
>Try this. 9:30am Saturday, walk into the parts department at Layerthorpe
>Audi (York) and ask for 8 of N 011 184 9 and some other bits. Get told
"They
>will be delivered on Tuesday". Very cool, calm and collected I then
enquired
>"These are all nuts and clevis pin retainers, general everyday parts - why
>the **** dont you keep them in stock?".
>"Company policy" was the answer.
>It seems that their idea of a parts department is a nice clean room with a
>microfiche reader and a pc. The only spare parts in it are the ones that
>work there. As far as I can work this out, they must book a job in some
days
>in advance, order every possible part that they might need and then charge
>the poor sucker for them all - its the only logical answer. As if logic
>comes into it :-).
>
>Jim Haseltine
>88 Ur quattro
>

Jim,

New Years Eve and all that, and I am at work doing silly  lists and setting
the lovely AS400 up for 1998...

There is an inventory listing here: there are close to 4000 different PN's
in inventory, with more ;-)  than one of a lot of stuff, total value (dlr.
cost) approx. USD 600 000.00

Let's see now, N 011 184 9 , well, we've got N 011 152 5 (12 of'em) and N
011 157 1 (5 of'em) and so on, but damit, not the N 011 184 9...

I've got over 600 oil filters of 16 (!!!!) different types, windshield of 24
different PN's, water pumps, clutch plates/pressure plates, belts of all
sizes and shapes, instrument assemblies (popular with A3 Golf/Vento and
early A4), and so on out the ying-yang.

Shit, I've got 51 of  N 011007 7, and haven't moved one since Oct.4th 1988.
I guess what I'm getting at is that there is no way a medium sized dealer
has everything in stock, but we do the best we can, of course I can only
speak for our humble efforts here.

Sorry to hear that the part you needed was not available, but unless a part
actually moves in inventory from time to time, we cannot have all the
tidbits.  We try to have all the usual (and some unusual) parts necessary in
case of car-down situations.  Trim/body/upholstery etc are certainly not
these types of parts, but timing belts, idler pulleys, brake parts etc are.

Sorry for the long post, but thought I'd get my FIM 0.02 (rounded here to
0.00 due to no smaller coin than 0.10) on this subject.

Happy New Year Jim & q-list,

Jouko Haapanen
Pori, Finland