Have you ever price shopped? Looked for the lowest price on an item or some service for your car or house? There are times when price shopping may be worthwhile. You know you want that 24-volt DeWalt drill and you shop around and find the big box store has a sale on it, but what about replacing the alternator on your car or reroofing your house? While price shopping makes you feel good that you may have found the lowest price, did you get the best, or at least a good quality repair for what you paid? Not all auto repair shops offer the same quality parts or service. You can almost always find some shop that can replace your alternator for less, but what are you getting for less? Quality parts, proper training to make sure the job was done correctly? Did you know that on some European vehicles you need to tell the computer you installed a new battery? I have had to replace several batteries just after the customer had it replaced elsewhere because this was not done and it cooked the new battery.
With the globalization of today, almost identical looking parts are made by many different manufactures. You can look at 5 different oil filters made by 5 different manufactures and they look almost identical but they all cost a different amount, so can you just use the cheapest one? The oil change will be cheaper that way, right? Well, they are different. The filter that costs more probably has a manufacture specified smaller micron filter element inside which will filter out more debris from your oil before circulating it through your engine again. It costs more to use quality materials to make that filter, so the filter will typically be a higher price.
Electrical parts are a great example of quality. There are quite a few different manufactures of alternators, starters and other electrical parts, but most of them I wouldn’t use on my own car. For some reason the cheaper ones come with a lifetime warranty, I always say they offer the life time warranty because you will need it. I am very particular on where we source our electrical parts from. Sometimes the best quality is from the dealer and sometimes there is a less expensive aftermarket alternative that provides the same proven quality as the dealer part.
These examples are true for almost every part on your vehicle including exterior body parts. Where does your shop source their parts from? What is the quality of that part? We may not use the cheapest parts which will make the repair cost a little more, but I know the parts we do install have a proven quality track record and you are getting the best quality repair we can provide. We want you to leave our shop with the peace of mind knowing your vehicle was repaired correctly and with quality parts.
Be sure to check out my next post about check engine light diagnosis.