In the past, a good portion of auto shops have overcharged their customers on parts. They realized they good give a small discount on dealer list for parts while actually selling the cheapest part they could find. Some mechanics were seeing profits from auto parts in the 200-300% range. Car owners have since wised up. With a lot of auto parts wholesalers starting their own websites to sell to the general public, consumers have realized they can actually buy the parts themselves at considerably discounted prices. On average, a person can save anywhere from 40-60% off what the mechanic would charge. The best advantage to this is they are getting much higher quality parts at half the cost. Sites such as Autohaus Arizona offer high quality parts at heavily discounted pricing.
The problem is that a new and prospective customer would never use these searches to find you. A prospective customer, searching for your products and services would not be looking for you if they already know who you are. They are not going to type in a lengthy full sentence into their search that just happens to match a sentence on your website. If they know your domain name, why search for it? These cases are extreme examples of “worthless keywords”. A “worthless keyword” is a keyword that has little to no searches performed for that keyword by real users.
Some auto shops shops are providing catalogs for their classic cars and parts. They could be ordered online and is to be sent through mail. Included in the catalog are photos and specifications of available parts.
You will be provided all the auto repair shops in your area with a rating, how long they’ve been in business, the name, address, phone number, a description of their services and any other pertinent information. It’s much better than the BBB as these are real people who had work done by these companies and have given their comments on them and a score.
As soon as you come across a few good and reliable stores, you can look for the auto part you need. Check out all its details as well as the price. It is important to check more than one site so that you can compare the prices of the auto parts and settle on the right option according to your need and budget.
Let us start with ease of obtaining. Obviously newer car parts will be easier to get than older ones. A friend of mine still has a 1975 Pontiac Lemans. To obtain parts for this car he has to literally go to junk yards and even online. No new car dealers keep parts beyond 10 years or so and even scrap metal yards stores limit their inventory to cars under 20 years. A 30 year old vehicle is almost impossible to find parts for. Plus, if you can find the part, depending on where you get it, the cost could be anywhere from 20 to 100% over the original part cost. To say that late model car owners are taken advantage of would be a gross understatement.
Cheaper car parts manufactured in countries such as China are the ones where greater care needs to be taken. While some of these car parts are built well, others are not. Ask your seller about the reliability of these as well as the warranty.
Shops like this will frequently be all over the place in terms of estimates, information, reasons they can’t say anything over the phone, and just about everything else you can think of.