A lot of times with factory order spare parts people get a bit upset about the length of time that they can take to arrive and don’t understand how it all works. We are going to try to explain a lot of the mystery that surrounds this.
An important thing to keep in mind here is that often when it comes to spare parts, other than some fast moving lines, most items are low volume and low-profit margin items. Most spare parts are also very cheap in relative terms so you have a low margin on low-cost items so unless you sell through a decent volume of a line then it is unlikely that many if indeed any will be held on a shelf for immediate dispatch.
That gives some headaches at times, which we will try to explain.
Let’s be clear though, the systems that many still use are desperately inefficient and to people outside the industry often appear to be positively stone age but, there are reasons for that with the biggest single one being, to keep costs down.
In Stock/Not In Stock
A lot of spare part distributors, suppliers, websites and even manufacturers will display that parts are available to order or not and will give their best estimate on delivery times. As we do.
The reason is simple, there are tens upon tens of thousands of spare parts, it’s impossible to keep all parts in one place for immediate dispatch at all times. Even huge global manufacturers can’t do that, it’s just too huge a task.
Throw in the number of manufacturers and it’s easy to understand why it’s an impossible challenge.
Some sites do display live-stock but, like any system, it’s not always 100% accurate and this is a problem that we face with manufacturers and suppliers as well.
The bottom line being, not every part will be available all the time and on occasion, until you physically check it you won’t know for sure.
Factory Orders
Ordering spare parts from most factories are not like ordering from Amazon!
Often what they appear to do is get a box, set it on a pallet and fill it up as they go fetch, find or get parts in to fulfil orders. Then when it’s full or there’s nothing more to add they seal it up and send it.
The effect of this for any number can be that, you don’t know what’s in the box, it could be jumbled up orders in no particular order and you may even not be entirely sure what’s in that box until you unpack it and check it all.
That pallet or box is then ordinarily sent the cheapest possible route on freight so, it’s not fast!
Add to this that, for almost all manufacturers bar a handful, there’s no way to see what they have or don’t have sat on the shelf ready to send.
Of course some are better than others at all this but generally speaking, getting exact ETAs or even what is and isn’t available before ordering is nigh on impossible without asking first.
All these leaving people waiting on parts from the factory with but two options, wait for it or cancel it. There’s usually no other choice to make.
UK/EU Stocks
There’s a whole bunch of parts that are normally in stock all the time somewhere in the UK or the EU with spare distribution companies, at a guess we’d wager about 90% of most things that ever get asked for with any regularity. And, that’s pretty good and pretty efficient as well.
For the most part, this is okay.
Where it’s not in stock is when everyone starts to get headaches!
Rest Of World
The USA isn’t too bad to order parts from but they will usually come by ground shipping so, not fast.
You can, of course, get spare parts faster than the norm but it will cost more, often the shipping cost is greater than the price of the spare part!
Anything from Asia, all bets are off!
If and, it’s a big “IF” you can even get the part at all as the Chinese in our experience are woefully bad at aftercare it could take weeks or months to arrive if it ever does.
Forget having it sent any faster, it simply won’t happen as they will often, even for brands buying machines elsewhere, just fire a box or two of parts on the next container coming to save on the cash sending them. No containers due, you’ll get the parts on the next one, even if that’s months away!
The next problem there and, it is worse on Chinese product in our experience is that parts from Asia tend to go obsolete rather quickly. That includes Korean machines.
That fancy eight-year-old side by side fridge freezer people have, they aren’t getting any internal plastics or shelves for it. Washing machines with no parts available after a few years, very commonplace. Repeat as required for almost all else.
Hiding Behind Part Numbers
All that gets us to the phenomena of own label brands and how that many of the appliances we see today on sale in the UK, Europe and elsewhere can be the same thing only different.
You have the same products rebadged with different facias or colours but, on the inside, they’re all pretty much the same thing.
Problem is, there’s no way to know which one is the same as another one unless you have the information to do so.
In turn that leads to the insane position where you can very, very easily have a part on the shelf, a person looking for that part but nobody knows if it will fit or not! It is crazy.
You can’t tell as spare parts, well they pretty much all look the same or similar, the numbers on the parts themselves are often meaningless and all you have is a description and a part number from the brand it was sold under.
Whilst other brands may well use exactly the same parts, they use different part numbers so, you have no idea what’s the same as whatever else.
Sometimes (read often) we suss that out and why we are often cheaper than many others for spare parts but, on any number as remember there are tens of thousands of spare part lines, you just don’t know.
And this is why you will often come across spare parts that cost ludicrous sums of money. Because there’s no free competition to allow the pricing to be made lower.
The reason for all this malarky, in our opinion, is that many of these brands do not want you their customer to be aware that they didn’t make the appliance you bought. They don’t want you to know that the fancy brand name product is actually a rebadged hunk of Chinese junk or whatever.
Obviously, we’re not too keen on that situation. We actively act against it wherever possible and berate the brands that practice this.
Obsolete
We’ve covered this before but it’s worth mentioning here that a lot of this kind of stuff is what leads to people not being able to get parts for an appliance that they own.
Of course, there are other reasons but the stuff above is the single most frustrating for us as, we know that the part is out there, probably sat on a shelf but you can’t find it as there’s no freedom of information.
Parts becoming obsolete faster is common, very possibly down to low use but we explain that here.
If you think you have any protection in law about it, think again as we explain here, it’s the Wild West in this area with no legislation at all. Even the manufacturer’s trade association doesn’t seem to give a stuff, they perhaps even support these practices, who knows.
Spare Parts Suppliers
We’ve just got to put up with all this insanity, try to steer people through it and advise the best we can.
We can’t change it. At least, not on our little old lonesomes we can’t.
We do what we can of course and shout about this every chance we get but we are hampered in many ways as there is not a scrap of legislation to protect customers from all this stuff.
We know it’s crazy. We know it’s an environmental disaster area. We know it costs people loads of money. We know all too well it’s frustrating and a lot of hassle at times for owners having trouble getting parts.
But, there’s really not much we can do about it. We’re just stuck with the system like everyone else.