I have previously moaned about parts prices in the UK and have myself chosen to source parts cheaper from abroad (Courtesy Nissan in Texas, US, are excellent for small but high priced Nissan parts like lambda sensors).
Anyway, I needed a piece of interior trim for a Mitsubishi I'm working on. The local Mitsi dealer quoted almost £140 for this little piece of plastic. After some web searching I found a dealer in Auckland NZ. The cost from them (inc. air shipment to the UK)? Just £58! - quite some saving. I've not got it yet, but even if I get hit with some UK import tax it will still be a worthwhile saving. They have the part in stock and reckon maximum 10 days delivery to UK. My local dealer wanted 3-4 weeks to get the part, but 'couldn't promise'!
What is going on in this country when it is faster and cheaper to source a part from a tiny country of 3 million people on the other side of the world?
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Silly isnt it? I know a guy who regularly buys parts for his Ford Probe from the USA. Even though he gets hit by import tax it still ends up a lot cheaper and faster than buying the part from a UK supplier.
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I expect the answer will be that we have to have such high margins on such low volume items in the UK to cover the truely huge overhead cost of having commercial premises.
Why Government have allowed conditions for property values to rise as high as they have, well that's another matter....
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>>Why Government have allowed conditions for property values to rise as high as they have, well that's another matter....>>
It falsely boosts the economy, hence the massive rise in debt.
I regularly obtain items of a computer nature from the States - apart from the fact that they are considerably cheaper, a point made earlier about car parts, delivery time is rarely more than a week and I've never had to pay duty to date.....:-)
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What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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Main dealer spares prices? Twice that of local factors. GS&F or FordPartUK are up to 50% cheaper than most main dealers.The same goes for clothes, or computer parts or almost any volume items.
Where possible I buy from the internet/ebay: the process is easy , much cheaper and faster. The businesses have scale economies.
Main dealers have fancy and expensively built and located showrooms (to attract punters) and put their parts operations there as well. Most dealerships are fragmented based on lots of small outlets: reminiscent of retail food shopping 40 years ago before the supermarkets. And their quality of service is nowhere near as good as supermarkets.
The UK retail motor industry is stuck in a time warp..
The pile it high and sell it cheap car supermarkets don't have any service systems so make things worse. New cars are barely profitable so price up service and parts is the answer.
madf
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It falsely boosts the economy, hence the massive rise in debt.
I was going to say that, but I thought I'd get told off as it's not motoring related. Plenty of people who have increased their debt on the back of increased property values and have spent the money on new cars (motoring link).
It's easy to have years of uninterupted growth if you can encourage a fundamental asset to increase in value, so people increase debt and spend it on consumer items. Can't go on forever of course. What were they thinking ...
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>> Can't go on forever of course. What were they thinking ...
They were thinking it would go on past the election in May?
The exchange rate with the US makes it particularly attractive for parts now, some shippers ask for the duty payments otherwise you should arrange it yourself. Often works out cheaper even with that on top!
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I get everything from the US, bike parts, car parts you name it. You always get a helpful knowledgeable person on the other end of the line, it arrives DHL in 2-3 days. Courier brings it to my door with a statement for the import duty. They clear the whole shipment container rather than individual shipments and just divide the duty by the total number of packages. Simple.
UK is hopeless for any sort of service. Always was. Everything's too hard and you have to wait for some pimple called Darren on an endless call centre line. If my call is so important to you WTF don't you answer it.
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UPDATE
Mitsubishi part arrived this morning, all the way from New Zealand. 7 days from order to my front door - so not bad. Cost worked out at £55 inc shipping (no duty to pay).
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Does this New Zealand place do nissan spares? If so could I have the address/url? I've just got stung for £95 +VAT for a radiator fan. I can't believe a boring bit of plastic can cost sooooo much!
teabelly
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SWMBO has, bless her, shut the door and trapped the seat belt buckle between the hard plastic door trim and pillar of her Hyundai Trajet. The local dealer want over £300 and there are none in stock.
Anyone any idea if I can get one from overseas?
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Espada III - well if you have a family and need a Lamborghini, what else do you drive?
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Thats a lot of money for a new Trajet, cant you fix the old one?
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Ho Ho Ho Ho.....
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Espada III - well if you have a family and need a Lamborghini, what else do you drive?
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Idiot me should have said that the broken item is the door panel with a large hole in it.. So we need a new door panel (not a new car, RF) or I need a wife who is more careful.
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Espada III - well if you have a family and need a Lamborghini, what else do you drive?
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"or I need a wife who is more careful"
Ship one in from abroad, Growler can import them via UPS apparently.
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I need a wife who is more careful.
You might find one who is more careful, but I doubt that you'd find one more tolerant and accepting - a Trajet for goodness sake.
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She chose it herself!!! I did suggest a Voyager, Sharalaxy, Espace etc, but noooooo... those were far too flash????
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Espada III - well if you have a family and need a Lamborghini, what else do you drive?
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Espada, might it be worth pursueing a warranty claim? If the seat belt can be shown not to retract correctly (the belts on our Trajet seem slugish to pull back!)then the damage could be caused by a fault with the car. Nothing to lose by trying is there?
Doyle
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Ask your dealer who they use locally to repair small plastic damage.It will be around £25-£50 to make an invisible repair.These companies are usually franchised and mobile.
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I get most replacement parts for my Chevy directly from suppliers in Texas. Cost varies between one third to half UK prices plus shipping. Standard USPS air freight takes about 7 days door to door. UPS or DHL are quicker but significantly more expensive.
As Aprilia mentioned, the trick is to get the balance right between parts cost, shipping costs and delivery time. Air freight costs for heavy or bulky items can wipe out any savings on parts cost. The alternative is to use surface freight which can take 3 or 4 weeks.
Kevin...
PS. Did anyone read the article on the back page of last Saturday's Telegraph. A Professor of Economics at Swansea Uni. said that EU trade and competition rules add 69% to the cost of vehicles in the UK.
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I'm not sure about this post, it's on-topic to this thread, but non-motoring. If there are any mods about, feel free to delete if you feel it doesn't fit.
Has anyone experimented with sourcing abroad for other things? Something that springs to mind is computer components - graphics cards and the like. Very expensive, very small and light therefore shipping cheap.
If anyone has any tips for suppliers, I'd love to hear them.
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It shouldn't really be here, but I'll leave it alone for an hour or two and then move it across to IHAQ..
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I recently bought via E-bay a 512mb RAM memory stick from the USA, cost £35.00, included insurance and P&P. Took seven days to deliver. The cheapest similar item in the UK was ~£65.00 and a very large computer store wanted £81.00. It pays to shop around. I bought on E-bay a USB2 board from Hong Kong, less than £10.00 all in price. Yes, we are seriously being ripped off and many thanks to E-bay.
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Cheers Mark.
Peter: Is that eBay.com then, rather than eBay.co.uk?
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E-bay.co.uk.
Just do a search on what item you want and it is amazing what appears.
Peter
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To be honest, when it comes to computer components I can probably source them nearly as cheaply in the UK as the US. The difference is not worth the hastle of importing them.
In the kind of areas I deal in (latest technology - called bleeding edge) availability is the problem. High end High power expensive graphics cards have a real availbility problem both in the US and here.
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