Parts guy blues

[Mcrafty1]

Never heard of a discount for looking up your own parts. It is not expected the purchaser do that work. Looking up the parts yourself is an option you can do to possibly increase your odds of getting the right parts, if you don't trust the parts person.

If the dealer's person double checks your numbers, or looks it up, there can be an easier return discussion of something is wrong, than if you say here is the list I want, period. I don't mind them checking when I give them a list, it is easier to review discrepancies before ordering than after waiting for the parts to arrive, if they are not in stock, to find out something is wrong.

You make a valid point but...If the dealer parts slinger behind the desk can't take your serial number, the same serial number that you yourself use to look up parts, and get the correct parts for you how would anyone expect to get the right parts using what i assume is the same program the dealer uses? Just another way of looking at it.

 

[NY 986]

You make a valid point but...If the dealer parts slinger behind the desk can't take your serial number, the same serial number that you yourself use to look up parts, and get the correct parts for you how would anyone expect to get the right parts using what i assume is the same program the dealer uses? Just another way of looking at it.

There is an excellent chance the parts person has never seen your piece of equipment so depending on the quality of the schematic they most likely will make errors as to identifying what is needed. Also, at least around here all dealers will tell you that working for the pay offered is the number one criteria when hiring a new employee. That having a farm background is unimportant if considered at all. In 2025 having good computer skills would be considered more important than having a farm background. You the customer probably should have a better chance of identifying the correct parts needed as you have seen the machine personally and can extrapolate from a given diagram as to what may be needed but is on another page in the computer system.

 

[NY 986]

Just curious, does anyone know if Deere or any other of the various brands of equipment parts departments offer discounts if we do our own parts lookups/ordering? Or is it expected of the purchaser to do that work for nothing?

No discounts just like at Walmart or the grocery store where you scan and bag but do not get paid to do so. Case IH and NH work the same way as I have never received a discount for looking up my own parts. It accomplishes nothing to bark at the parts person for not knowing all the details of a machine they have never seen before in their lives. If they could be doing brain surgery or design space craft they would be doing so as the pay would be far greater than standing behind a parts counter getting yelled at all day.

 

[rrlund]

There is an excellent chance the parts person has never seen your piece of equipment so depending on the quality of the schematic they most likely will make errors as to identifying what is needed. Also, at least around here all dealers will tell you that working for the pay offered is the number one criteria when hiring a new employee. That having a farm background is unimportant if considered at all. In 2025 having good computer skills would be considered more important than having a farm background. You the customer probably should have a better chance of identifying the correct parts needed as you have seen the machine personally and can extrapolate from a given diagram as to what may be needed but is on another page in the computer system.

I was watching a show on television a few years ago, How I made my Millions. There was a guy in the HVAC business in some big city, Atlanta or Miami, someplace like that. In just a few years, he had become the largest HVAC business in the city with 66 trucks on the road. He said his secret was customer service. He said he only hired people from the hospitality industry, hotel management, restaurant management, that kind of thing. He said it was easier to teach HVAC to people with good customer skills than it was to teach good customer skills to people with HVAC experience.

There's a lesson in there for anybody who wants to recognize it.

 

[flying belgian]

Doesn't it seem like each parts station should have 2 screens for his computer? One facing him and one facing you. Then you could follow along and guide him since you know what the part you are after looks like and he don't.

I have had the parts guy tell me to ,,,come around here,,, to his side.

 

[Jim.ME]

You make a valid point but...If the dealer parts slinger behind the desk can't take your serial number, the same serial number that you yourself use to look up parts, and get the correct parts for you how would anyone expect to get the right parts using what i assume is the same program the dealer uses? Just another way of looking at it.

I am not 100% sure but from helping determine an actual part with a dealer parts guy, the screen he was using was different than the one I can access. I have never had an issue when at the dealer ship asking to see what they are looking at on their screen.

I also know that sending someone with a part in hand and the simple instruction to tell the parts person you need one like this for X machine, can be lacking critical info the parts person needs.

Again, I am not defending everything that happens, it is just there are a number of contributing factors on both sides when it comes to success or failure.

 

[Tx Jim]

My having experience being formally employed by a JD dealership for 21 yrs then 35 yrs of custom farming & looking up parts. I think a lot of the problems when looking up parts is determining what the parts catalog authors named/called a particular part. I have many hours experience looking up parts & sometimes I have problems locating correct parts schematics.

 

[NY 986]

I was watching a show on television a few years ago, How I made my Millions. There was a guy in the HVAC business in some big city, Atlanta or Miami, someplace like that. In just a few years, he had become the largest HVAC business in the city with 66 trucks on the road. He said his secret was customer service. He said he only hired people from the hospitality industry, hotel management, restaurant management, that kind of thing. He said it was easier to teach HVAC to people with good customer skills than it was to teach good customer skills to people with HVAC experience.

There's a lesson in there for anybody who wants to recognize it.

Good customer service complete with being courteous is important. But virtually never is the lack of being courteous the tipping point where an interaction between a customer and an employee goes off of the rails. I would also say that being a HVAC technician is quite a bit different than being a farm equipment dealer parts person. I would imagine that for most of a shift the HVAC tech has little interaction with people. It is mostly about working on the equipment. But yes they need to keep their cool when confronted by an angry customer even when the tech has done nothing wrong. Interesting that we are talking about this as on the way home from church yesterday morning the AM radio Mr Fixit guy was commenting on a survey which stated 7 percent of the general public will never be satisfied in a business encounter. That is a little less than one out of ten. Good customer service is very important but I doubt it will make most businesses that sell technology. Easier to go up the street if a person has a bad encounter with a grocery store than a bad encounter with a HVAC tech.

 

[NY 986]

I am not 100% sure but from helping determine an actual part with a dealer parts guy, the screen he was using was different than the one I can access. I have never had an issue when at the dealer ship asking to see what they are looking at on their screen.

I also know that sending someone with a part in hand and the simple instruction to tell the parts person you need one like this for X machine, can be lacking critical info the parts person needs.

Again, I am not defending everything that happens, it is just there are a number of contributing factors on both sides when it comes to success or failure.

Just to expand on what you are talking about I have never had a parts person refuse to let a person step in back of their counter to see what they are looking at. Most are as anxious as the customer to avoid an error if possible.

 

[Mcrafty1]

Lets just say I understand the op frustration, I see looking back he didn't mention the serial #, I also don't see that the salesman asked for one. Maybe one mitigates the other.
I have a Cat excavator, a 307 I've bought many parts for it over the years. Most recently I bought a seal kit to repack the main boom cylinder. It was soled to me as a kit That was in the fall, I decided this spring to repack the stick boom cylinder and the bucket curl cylinder. I called Cat and told them what I needed. They have my machine info on file, 2 hrs. later I get a call back..no kits available anymore I need to by the seals individually and need numbers off the barrel of each, I get the numbers, call back and get a different parts guy gave him my name, told him I needed seals for the two cylinders my machine, he says hang on, a few minutes later he comes back on the line and sells me the kits.

 

[wore out]

Doesn't it seem like each parts station should have 2 screens for his computer? One facing him and one facing you. Then you could follow along and guide him since you know what the part you are after looks like and he don't.

I have had the parts guy tell me to ,,,come around here,,, to his side.

Our nearby DEERE dealership has exactly that, his and my screens!

 

[NY 986]

Lets just say I understand the op frustration, I see looking back he didn't mention the serial #, I also don't see that the salesman asked for one. Maybe one mitigates the other.
I have a Cat excavator, a 307 I've bought many parts for it over the years. Most recently I bought a seal kit to repack the main boom cylinder. It was soled to me as a kit That was in the fall, I decided this spring to repack the stick boom cylinder and the bucket curl cylinder. I called Cat and told them what I needed. They have my machine info on file, 2 hrs. later I get a call back..no kits available anymore I need to by the seals individually and need numbers off the barrel of each, I get the numbers, call back and get a different parts guy gave him my name, told him I needed seals for the two cylinders my machine, he says hang on, a few minutes later he comes back on the line and sells me the kits.

So what do you chalk up the difference to between parts person number 1 and 2? Seems like if there was a simple note on the page to use kit XYZ that the first person would have done so. Maybe the second person knows the Cat system better to use to his advantage.

 

[rrlund]

Good customer service complete with being courteous is important. But virtually never is the lack of being courteous the tipping point where an interaction between a customer and an employee goes off of the rails. I would also say that being a HVAC technician is quite a bit different than being a farm equipment dealer parts person. I would imagine that for most of a shift the HVAC tech has little interaction with people. It is mostly about working on the equipment. But yes they need to keep their cool when confronted by an angry customer even when the tech has done nothing wrong. Interesting that we are talking about this as on the way home from church yesterday morning the AM radio Mr Fixit guy was commenting on a survey which stated 7 percent of the general public will never be satisfied in a business encounter. That is a little less than one out of ten. Good customer service is very important but I doubt it will make most businesses that sell technology. Easier to go up the street if a person has a bad encounter with a grocery store than a bad encounter with a HVAC tech.

I wouldn't have thought a full 7% of the population would be named Karen.

 

[Mcrafty1]

So what do you chalk up the difference to between parts person number 1 and 2? Seems like if there was a simple note on the page to use kit XYZ that the first person would have done so. Maybe the second person knows the Cat system better to use to his advantage.

Maybe the second person knows the Cat system better to use to his advantage.

Exactly, But how is the customer suppose to know that when he approaches the sales person? To me the logical answer is expect the the seller to know his product. That's really all I got to say about that.

 

[NY 986]

Exactly, But how is the customer suppose to know that when he approaches the sales person? To me the logical answer is expect the the seller to know his product. That's really all I got to say about that.

There is no substitute for experience and there is only one way to gain experience. I've worked four parts related jobs and none of the employers educated the newbie on the product line. The employee is thrown to the wolves and if he survives he survives. If such a position exists and it is not occupied when an employee comes on board it is helpful to do receiving at a dealership. But most of the time the parts person is expected to unpack and put away parts but it still takes time to get a sense of what is going on. A lot of times he does not see the paperwork that goes with an incoming order. I remember back during the late 1980's the one JD dealer picked up a parts guy that worked for a Ford agricultural dealer. The guy was great with Ford but had a lot to learn with JD. It literally drove him to tears and being he was a pretty good guy I felt sorry for him. He was only there because the Ford dealer closed and did not want to run the roads an hour one way to find a job.

 

[rrlund]

Why not just install kiosks and have one person there to bring your parts out to the counter after you punch them in yourself? That's only half rhetorical since some of you don't think a parts person is there to look them up anyway.

 

[Jim.ME]

Why not just install kiosks and have one person there to bring your parts out to the counter after you punch them in yourself? That's only half rhetorical since some of you don't think a parts person is there to look them up anyway.

No Kiosks but with the system the local dealer has (I expect it is common with JD dealers), if you have an account, you can go online, find the parts numbers you need and place the order for your parts. When placing things in your cart you can see if they are in stock or have to be ordered and you can choose how they are ordered (stock or faster shipping, etc.). They call us when the order is ready for pickup.

I prefer to look up as many of my own parts as I can. After the regular ecommerce system some I found it works better for me to send an email with a list of the parts I want the parts guy, I try to stay with, to order. Like a number of other places, the old parts guys moved on, and it was new faces about every time you went in. This fellow is not an experienced parts guy (at least in JD), but he is trying and will ask if he doesn't understand something, so I try to work with him. He told me that with the ecommerce system if I put and order in and there are parts on it that have to be brought in, the system sends him email notices daily that there are parts not in stock on an order, for every order, sometimes every part, until the items get there and are pulled and invoiced. With that we agreed to try the email route, so he can enter the order through his system as he would if I walked in and placed the order, that way doesn't get the reminder notices. The other advantage to emailing is I get a response from him that he got the email, and the order is under way. So far, over a year and a half, it is working.

We've got to make the best of what is available. JMHO

 

[NY 986]

No Kiosks but with the system the local dealer has (I expect it is common with JD dealers), if you have an account, you can go online, find the parts numbers you need and place the order for your parts. When placing things in your cart you can see if they are in stock or have to be ordered and you can choose how they are ordered (stock or faster shipping, etc.). They call us when the order is ready for pickup.

I prefer to look up as many of my own parts as I can. After the regular ecommerce system some I found it works better for me to send an email with a list of the parts I want the parts guy, I try to stay with, to order. Like a number of other places, the old parts guys moved on, and it was new faces about every time you went in. This fellow is not an experienced parts guy (at least in JD), but he is trying and will ask if he doesn't understand something, so I try to work with him. He told me that with the ecommerce system if I put and order in and there are parts on it that have to be brought in, the system sends him email notices daily that there are parts not in stock on an order, for every order, sometimes every part, until the items get there and are pulled and invoiced. With that we agreed to try the email route, so he can enter the order through his system as he would if I walked in and placed the order, that way doesn't get the reminder notices. The other advantage to emailing is I get a response from him that he got the email, and the order is under way. So far, over a year and a half, it is working.

We've got to make the best of what is available. JMHO

The world is changing and that includes how dealerships operate. It has been said that there is too much store capacity out there in terms of ag dealerships so the expectation is now that the farm equipment industry is in the doldrums locations will be reduced by 1/3 on average. The view is also that parts people are not affordable if they are not spending every minute on the clock selling parts. This means the average parts person will be prioritized to give preference to large accounts and small accounts will have to find their own way. The new JD store in Batavia, NY (the result of closing two previous locations) has ag only parts people and turf only parts people. Staffing is determined by data obtained from hour to hour activity from the previous stores but there has been a net reduction in staffing. My understanding is that some auto dealerships have reduced parts staffing and that quite a bit of shop look up is done by the technicians as they have undergone manufacturer training so they have some familiarity with products. The stuff has gotten too complex for most who are not trained.

 

[Jim.ME]

The world is changing and that includes how dealerships operate. It has been said that there is too much store capacity out there in terms of ag dealerships so the expectation is now that the farm equipment industry is in the doldrums locations will be reduced by 1/3 on average. The view is also that parts people are not affordable if they are not spending every minute on the clock selling parts. This means the average parts person will be prioritized to give preference to large accounts and small accounts will have to find their own way. The new JD store in Batavia, NY (the result of closing two previous locations) has ag only parts people and turf only parts people. Staffing is determined by data obtained from hour to hour activity from the previous stores but there has been a net reduction in staffing. My understanding is that some auto dealerships have reduced parts staffing and that quite a bit of shop look up is done by the technicians as they have undergone manufacturer training so they have some familiarity with products. The stuff has gotten too complex for most who are not trained.

I looked to see if you by chance had the same mega dealer as we do, United Ag & Turf goes into NY I know, but I see you have LandPro. My guess as they operate pretty much the same. The location I deal with doesn't separate the parts guys to Ag or Turf; if they have, I haven't been instructed that I need to go to one person for my Ag parts. United has also bought up the construction and forestry dealers here. There is one old farm family independent Ag & Turf dealership I know of left in our area. We get somethings from them if they have in stock, and the closest UATNE doesn't, when we need it. Their prices are generally a bit lower, unfortunately the travel cost and time burns up any savings plus. I don't know how long they will be able to hang on, as they are surrounded by UATNE branches, but I hope they can.

 

[wore out]

Why not just install kiosks and have one person there to bring your parts out to the counter after you punch them in yourself? That's only half rhetorical since some of you don't think a parts person is there to look them up anyway.

The dealership I use has a shelf where they put internet parts orders marked with your name. If it hasn't been charged out to you grab your stuff and take it to the parts counter to pay, otherwise you can walk out with it.

Of course, LARGE/heavy parts won't be there.