Parts guy blues

[bernie in va]

Seems like this stirred up a hornets nest. I certainly understand. Last week I went to local dealership for filters. I handed the list with part number and what it went to the parts guy. I had around 15 or so filters I needed. Got them home 4 of them wrong filters. Numbers were off, usually one wrong number. Plus I didn't get a couple that were on the list. I asked the kid, fairly new guy, if he got them all and he said yes. Frustrating! The parts mgr and another guy are good though. Never had a problem with them.

 

[rrlund]

Four wrong, two missing. That's 40% error. To those who think this is an acceptable error rate, would you say this is acceptable in any other business? Seriously? If we were talking about somebody running a cash register in a store and the person was off by 40% in the store's favor, you'd say "That's OK, people make mistakes"?

 

[Wdj]

Ive seen a few young computer jockeys who took an interest and developed into real good parts men. On the other hand there was an old JD parts man locally who knew JD like the back of his hand. He would chew you out if you didn’t have a serial number no matter what you needed. I asked him for an oil filter for an A and he demanded the serial although he knew what it was.

 

[Jim.ME]

Four wrong, two missing. That's 40% error. To those who think this is an acceptable error rate, would you say this is acceptable in any other business? Seriously? If we were talking about somebody running a cash register in a store and the person was off by 40% in the store's favor, you'd say "That's OK, people make mistakes"?

I will not say that is acceptable by any means, it is not.

That is why I take a few minutes to check that I am getting what I asked for/ordered before paying, shame on me if I don't verify when I can. Numbers get transposed, things get overlooked, damage can happen in shipping, etc. Along the lines of 'Trust but Verify". I picked up parts at a dealer yesterday and the order was laid out and checked, before I paid. I don't need an extra two hour round trip to exchange parts, or get missing ones, when I can correct the problem at the time of original pick up.

 

[NY 986]

I will not say that is acceptable by any means, it is not.

That is why I take a few minutes to check that I am getting what I asked for/ordered before paying, shame on me if I don't verify when I can. Numbers get transposed, things get overlooked, damage can happen in shipping, etc. Along the lines of 'Trust but Verify". I picked up parts at a dealer yesterday and the order was laid out and checked, before I paid. I don't need an extra two hour round trip to exchange parts, or get missing ones, when I can correct the problem at the time of original pick up.

I don't think that anybody here would say that a 40 percent error rate is acceptable. Now as to the cause is it sloppiness by the parts person or is it something else such as a poorly written description of the associated parts from the schematic? We all want the person who can 100 percent satisfy us while being blindfolded but that is increasingly the exception rather than the rule today. The fact is there are more rewarding careers with better pay for those who have some ability and drive. 90 percent of what we see today are people who are parts employees because they lack either intellect or drive to become anything more advanced. Just the way it is in 2025. The way it is today we are probably lucky that we don't get assaulted when we give a parts person a hard time.

 

[Tx Jim]

Ive seen a few young computer jockeys who took an interest and developed into real good parts men. On the other hand there was an old JD parts man locally who knew JD like the back of his hand. He would chew you out if you didn’t have a serial number no matter what you needed. I asked him for an oil filter for an A and he demanded the serial although he knew what it was.

Asking for serial # to obtain an engine oil filter for JD rowcrop tractor being letter series or 10 or 20 series rowcrop tractor is being a little hard headed due to AR26350 fits all of those models regardless of the tractors serial #.

I agree knowing serial # is very important when looking up/ordering some parts.

Reading part # descriptions & footnotes before ordering parts is also very important.

 

[NY 986]

Asking for serial # to obtain an engine oil filter for JD rowcrop tractor being letter series or 10 or 20 series rowcrop tractor is being a little hard headed due to AR26350 fits all of those models regardless of the tractors serial #.

I agree knowing serial # is very important when looking up/ordering some parts.

Reading part # descriptions & footnotes before ordering parts is also very important.

Probably no more hard headed than the customer who insists that serial numbers are NEVER needed. The parts guy got to where he was because customers were saying "you did not ask me last time so why do you need it this time?"

 

[rrlund]

I don't think that anybody here would say that a 40 percent error rate is acceptable. Now as to the cause is it sloppiness by the parts person or is it something else such as a poorly written description of the associated parts from the schematic? We all want the person who can 100 percent satisfy us while being blindfolded but that is increasingly the exception rather than the rule today. The fact is there are more rewarding careers with better pay for those who have some ability and drive. 90 percent of what we see today are people who are parts employees because they lack either intellect or drive to become anything more advanced. Just the way it is in 2025. The way it is today we are probably lucky that we don't get assaulted when we give a parts person a hard time.

He said it was 15 filters. Why do you need a schematic for that?

 

[NY 986]

He said it was 15 filters. Why do you need a schematic for that?

Bernie said he took numbers along with what they fit. A person might think he listed the tractors they fit so as the parts person might double check via a lookup of what is on the list. Just about everything I see is organized by schematic then corresponding parts list. Sometimes there can be more than one schematic based on serial number break and if a substantial number of parts are different. As said above I am not excusing anybody if they were sloppy but without being there we may not know the full story. Sometimes there is no rhyme or reason to an encounter. I worked for a shop that had a few VIP customers which is to say they are NEVER wrong even when it does not please the manager. Had the owner of a fertilizer plant come in to get a roller for a loading conveyor. The shop just makes it as it is requested but this time the manager got a bug up his tail about it. Yes, it can be ordered but Mr VIP (who I got along with quite well) has always ordered it in the morning with the understanding that it is to be ready by no later than mid afternoon that same day. Mr VIP comes in late that day and no roller per the orders of the manager. The manager then starts some BS story as to how they never fab anything up on short notice. Mr VIP who was already starting to sour as to how things were run there let it be known he did not like being fed an outright lie from the manager.

 

[ss55]

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.

Yup, 10 percent of your customers will cause 90 percent of the problems.

 

[ss55]

^^^Good point but I seriously doubt it happens that way.
I've walked in with a part number from the diagrams and parts guy starts from scratch looking it up himself.

That is probably because he needs to enter the part number of each sale into the computerized inventory, billing and restocking system. The days of paper card inventory systems ended decades ago.