Dave,

Thank you for the information.

I do not think anybody would encourage customers to supply their own parts and if you have a full diary and the rents paid it’s easy to say no, if not or a good regular customer requests you to fit a part supplied by him (i.e. his brother works in the parts department) it is not so easy.

In the past if a customer was interested in purchasing his own parts he would have had no choice but to go to his main agent or local factors and the price he would have to pay (retail) would most likely be in the same ballpark as you would invoice out to him so he would soon realise that there was nothing to be gained in doing this.

Now the above is not the case as he has a vast amount of parts for sale online at big discounts (not all rubbish) and this does make the garage retail price (or even trade price) look high.

All in all Dave I imagine all will agree with your post and most will have been there in the past.


Jim,

Thank you for explaining what I wanted to say.

Thank you all Kevin.