Online auto parts sites such as Autopartstomorrow.com offer many conveniences that give the customer more power in determining how to manage the maintenance and upkeep of their car. Gone are the days when you had to take your car to a shop and have them diagnose and price the repair while you had absolutely no clue about what those parts and services should cost. Now, an informed consumer can check diagnostic codes for suggested repair time, look up their own repair parts on catalogs provided by multiple sites and compare costs. In the case of our site... order the part for much less than even the garage normally would pay, and get it the next day. Those are all of the good things.
Now for the bad. If you are working on your car on Saturday and accidentally damage a piece while removing or re-installing it, what do you do? If you order a part and find out later that your engine is a 4.6L but you thought it was a 5.4L, now you have ordered the wrong part. In both of those scenarios the local garage or auto parts store has several same day options. You do as well, but you won't be ordering the part from a wholesale parts distributor on the web and getting it today. Like everything in life there are positives and negatives to auto parts online. Great pricing, wide availability and easy to use tools are all great. However, their are benefits to local availability... and costs to those stores that will be passed on to you.
This brings up an issue that I would like to address here; Exchanges. Since we will never be able to have a face to face transaction, it becomes impossible for us to create an exchange procedure. We require that the buy and refund transactions stand completely on their own. What we do instead is work closely with our customers to try to minimize the turn around time for the second part, and try to credit the first part in a timely manner. Most of the time the actual part number needed is different, and the price is not the same. We would need the customer to make another online order for the new part (our experts are ready to help you confirm the part number) and communicate with us about expediting the credit once it shows back up at our warehouse. I will agree that this can sometimes cause financial stress, not to mention become an inconvenience, but we feel the small percentage of issues like this are easily outweighed by the huge savings on the actual parts.
Over the years, many industries have made sweeping changes to the way they do business. If you are old like me, you remember hardware stores where a friendly gentleman walked you to the dingy recesses of their store to find the exact widget you need (and paid full retail for it). I worked at a full service Gas Station where we charged an astronomical $1.50 on the full service pumps while self service was only $1.09 (and I stayed busy all day). I am even buying my prescription eyeglasses and contact lenses online these days because the savings are tremendous. Businesses serve a niche of their market to the best of their ability, and will live or die based on where a customer places their trust. Full Service Hardware stores are now almost non existent, replaced by Home Depot and Lowes. You cannot buy full service gas anymore. Local Opticians are almost gone as well... Consumers are very intelligent and will always be weighing the pros and cons. We hope that our extraordinary prices and service will help overcome some of the built in inconvenience of long distance transactions. It will be up to you to decide.
Autopartstomorrow.com
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