price of parts at dealer vs price online

so price of parts at the dealer looks to be about double that on-line after taking into account shipping and what not

Yup, ssdd.

Raise your hand if you are surprised...



Anyone???

(surprised that someone had to ask this)

the nearest guru is 13hrs away , a good dealer is 4 hrs

online makes sense for anything I don't need rightaway that I can fix myself like GP/harness / filters

it will have to be the dealer for anything else

http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/roseland/VWPartsA4.htm
Brian is excellent...

Not all parts are available online. Case in point are the rod bolts. I got these at the dealer for about $20 for the set of 8. Not too high for such high-spec, TTY with centering bosses and 12 point head.

I got my rod bolts online... But I'm here in the US if it makes a difference.. But for $20 I would have gotten them from the dealer if they were more friendly on the phone

whitedog said:

Raise your hand if you are surprised...



Anyone???

Click to expand...

Let's not forget that this is the TDI 101 forum. From my college days "101" meant "entry level". Because of this, the question seems very appropriate for this forum.

The answer: Yes, you can save quite a bit on OEM parts via the internet. But, always check with the dealer. Once and a while they surprise us an have very competitive prices on some items.

There are several well know vendors used by the members of this board.

www.tdiparts.com
www.1stvwparts.com (this is a dealer that sells parts online)
www.metalmanparts.com

There are many others but these will get most people on the right track


Paul

I am not suprised ,I am pretty sure the VW dealer can't sell parts that don't come from VW or risk losing their dealership ...in which case now they can't sell you the TDi you want to buy .They have made a deal to sell VW exclusively , they have to stock that stuff ,they have to pay more,they don't ship parts out of their basement they pay for a facility ... thats business

why would someone ask if the price is roughly double from the dealer? cuz it could be a different amount than roughly double ,and if I am to believe the last poster that could be the case

ya I can change air/cabin filter/GP's and harness and I did,I got em from tdi parts ...fairly straight forward to diagonse and change

but a MAF ,sure thats even easier to change BUT it wasnt easy to know it needed to be changed ,no I am not going to buy a scantool

I also think you need to be spending enough $ to make mailorder worth while , consider exchange , and then you take into account mistakes both yours and the vendor in my experiance from buying STUFF over the interent

frankly in 8 years and 2 TDi's I havent had much break , at 250,000km a few things are going so I havent had enough experiance to make the observation till now

TDIJetta99 said:

I got my rod bolts online... But I'm here in the US if it makes a difference.. But for $20 I would have gotten them from the dealer if they were more friendly on the phone

Click to expand...

The only dealer I will buy from is very friendly. They have to be, the owner of the dealership has his full name on it and he walks the halls, making sure customers are happy.

Yeah the local one here charges me list price even though I'm at a shop, and they aren't very friendly to deal with if you've never bought a car from them...

1stvwparts even with shipping is about 30% cheaper than the local dealer on most everything, and somehow they get me stuff faster even though they are almost 3000 miles away..

I've had decent luck so far on most things at my local VW dealer. They got to know me pretty well last spring as I had a few odds and ends I needed as I was working on getting my engine back together. They can get most anything in 1 day if they don't have it on hand, and are always very friendly. There are some items though that they are overpriced on...which is why I call first unless I'm desperate.

XXX_er said:

I am not suprised ,I am pretty sure the VW dealer can't sell parts that don't come from VW or risk losing their dealership ...

Click to expand...

That was something that always irritated my dad. You could go buy an AC filter from any place (Checker, Autozone, etc.) cheaper than GM would sell one direct to him. And that contractual arrangement forbade him from going to Autozone et. al. to buy any GM part.

While some dealers mark up parts prices even higher than suggested retail, most of them do not. And this is a problem more with VWAG and VWoA, IMO, than with dealers.

XXX_er said:

so price of parts at the dealer looks to be about double that on-line after taking into account shipping and what not

Click to expand...

haha DOUBLE?

try, i had to replace both my front fenders and hood (long story) so i decided to just do a Jetta front end swap.

called the Dealer here in JAxFL. one fender. 185 bucks EACH and i wont get them for 2 weeks

so 2 fenders would cost me 370 dollars.

i get on AMAZON.COM find fenders for 60, and 25 shipping EACH
after buying the two fenders off amazon and getting them in the mail within 1 week.
saved quite a bit of money, and i have a Jolf now.

Sometimes aftermarket parts are cheap for a reason. Often times you get what you pay for, but I get my parts for 10% over dealer cost.

I don't want to re-hash the Factory vs OEM parts debate, and I often go with OEM parts via one of the various TDIClub online vendors.

BUT, for a critical, highly loaded, and very tightly specified part like, say, rod bolts... I'd buy 'em from the dealer even if they DID cost double.

Eddy

DubinJax said:

haha DOUBLE?

i get on AMAZON.COM find fenders for 60, and 25 shipping EACH
after buying the two fenders off amazon and getting them in the mail within 1 week.
saved quite a bit of money, and i have a Jolf now.

Click to expand...

apples and apples or apples and oranges ...did you get a smoking deal on the exact same thing the VW dealer was selling ?


so you paid 170$ ,double that would be 340$ to the dealers 370$ ... I would call that slightly more than double

all too often when folks tell me how much they saved on something they don't add in all the costs ,shipping & duty to canada are a big one specialy when we had a 65cent dollar ,or buddy tells you he has it shipped to a PO in blaine but doesnt count the time & money it costs to pick it up

I once bought some mtn bike shoes from cali ,a smoking deal only 39.95US ,a clearout on really small or big sizes.By the time they were on my feet 112 can$ ... still better than 159$ msrp at the LBS but the hidden costs were considerable

the high canuck buck/low US dollar was great last year , everybody was stoked about how cheap stuff was on the internet ,to which I would point out yah but we depend on them to buy 75% of our GDP which they can no longer afford to buy ... keep yer money cuz soon you won't have a job