motorpsycho
Active Member
yeah i used to work at a HUGE, well known office supply mail order warehouse back in the late 80's.
Every time someone sent something back (either we sent the wrong item, it was broken, missing peices or whatever) it immidiatly went in the dumpster and replaced for free.
Their theory was that it would cost them more money to re-stock the items, return them to the original mfg. for a replacement, or get the missing peices than it would to just throw it away. The dumpsters there were literally full to the top every day of good, useable office products. They used to let us rummage through the dumpsters if we wanted to.
so figure in the cost to inspect each and every engine kit thouroughly before sending it out. say it takes 30 minutes to fully inspect each kit and you pay a person working for you $15.00 an hour. That's $30.00 for every 2 engine inspections, which cuts into your profit margin majorly. When you are making $10.00 - $15.00 on each engine you sell, you would automatically be in the hole after inspecting one of them.
it's much easier and cheaper to just take them in, turn around and send them right back out and make your $10.00 - $15.00 profit per engine.
if you send one kit out that has a bad engine, simply have the customer send the engine back(he pays shipping) and then send him another one the same day that you receive the bad one from the customer (vendor pays return shipping to keep the customer happy). so the vendor may lose the shipping cost, but this customer will be a repeat customer because it basically cost him nothing to get another brand new engine. The stipulation would be that the customer would have say 30 days to return a kit with a bad engine. (that's how i would do it anyway)
if a customer buys a kit with missing or broken parts, I woudl just have the customer do the same thing. send the broken part in and then supply him with a free replacement (with the shipping done the same way as with the engine). but, the customer would have say 10 days to return a part that was broken when he opened the box.
Missing parts could be a hard thing to deal with because as the vendor, how do you know for sure that a part was actually missing from the kit?
You could trust the customer, or you could think that you're being scammed.
But think about it....how much do the misc. parts for an engine kit really cost?
They can't be that much, and if a guy complains that he got a kit that's missing the carb for example...send him a new one for free. They can't cost a vedor more than $5.00 because they can be bought on e-bay from these vendors for like $12.00. a vendor should have a few kits set aside just to rob parts from to replace broken or missing parts to customers (in my opinion).
The thing is to beleive your customers and try to trust what they are saying is true. Make them happy and make returns/replacements a simple process...it really isn't that hard to do.
Doing things this way will cut into your profit margin, but you have to be willing to absorb it and move on.
If you (as a vendor) want repeat customers, this is how it has to be done.
The best form of advertizing is word of mouth...and trust me when people reccomend a specific vendor to someone else, it's because they were taken care of very well.
Every time someone sent something back (either we sent the wrong item, it was broken, missing peices or whatever) it immidiatly went in the dumpster and replaced for free.
Their theory was that it would cost them more money to re-stock the items, return them to the original mfg. for a replacement, or get the missing peices than it would to just throw it away. The dumpsters there were literally full to the top every day of good, useable office products. They used to let us rummage through the dumpsters if we wanted to.
so figure in the cost to inspect each and every engine kit thouroughly before sending it out. say it takes 30 minutes to fully inspect each kit and you pay a person working for you $15.00 an hour. That's $30.00 for every 2 engine inspections, which cuts into your profit margin majorly. When you are making $10.00 - $15.00 on each engine you sell, you would automatically be in the hole after inspecting one of them.
it's much easier and cheaper to just take them in, turn around and send them right back out and make your $10.00 - $15.00 profit per engine.
if you send one kit out that has a bad engine, simply have the customer send the engine back(he pays shipping) and then send him another one the same day that you receive the bad one from the customer (vendor pays return shipping to keep the customer happy). so the vendor may lose the shipping cost, but this customer will be a repeat customer because it basically cost him nothing to get another brand new engine. The stipulation would be that the customer would have say 30 days to return a kit with a bad engine. (that's how i would do it anyway)
if a customer buys a kit with missing or broken parts, I woudl just have the customer do the same thing. send the broken part in and then supply him with a free replacement (with the shipping done the same way as with the engine). but, the customer would have say 10 days to return a part that was broken when he opened the box.
Missing parts could be a hard thing to deal with because as the vendor, how do you know for sure that a part was actually missing from the kit?
You could trust the customer, or you could think that you're being scammed.
But think about it....how much do the misc. parts for an engine kit really cost?
They can't be that much, and if a guy complains that he got a kit that's missing the carb for example...send him a new one for free. They can't cost a vedor more than $5.00 because they can be bought on e-bay from these vendors for like $12.00. a vendor should have a few kits set aside just to rob parts from to replace broken or missing parts to customers (in my opinion).
The thing is to beleive your customers and try to trust what they are saying is true. Make them happy and make returns/replacements a simple process...it really isn't that hard to do.
Doing things this way will cut into your profit margin, but you have to be willing to absorb it and move on.
If you (as a vendor) want repeat customers, this is how it has to be done.
The best form of advertizing is word of mouth...and trust me when people reccomend a specific vendor to someone else, it's because they were taken care of very well.
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any complaints? nope.
