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Insane Shipping Prices and Super-Secret Ordering Process (Decoder Ring Required)
So, I was just looking at my radiator drain plug to help a fellow forum member, and noticed it was pretty chewed up, so thought I'd order another one. I quickly checked JaguarParts.com and the drain plug itself (C2C1467)was only $4.25, which is surprisingly fair enough. However, when I went to check out, my total was $57.95 (before taxes). Yep, that's right, they want to charge me $53.70 to ship a $4 piece of rubber which is smaller than my pinky and which won't arrive for 4-6 days. I know we're living in bizarro world right now, but what in the absolute hell? It's not like it would be delivered today or something, so how can they justify that ridiculous shipping cost???
Call it morbid curiosity or maybe I'm just a glutton, but because I've been trying to shop so many parts and have been consistently seeing these inordinate shipping prices from a lot of the dealer sites, and consequently not ordering anything from them because of their stupidity, I decided to call JaguarParts.com to ask why. I spoke with a really nice guy in the parts department who was slightly tough to understand due to his accent, but I think that he basically said their "system was just set up that way," and what I should actually do is populate my shopping cart on their website, and then somehow place the order without paying for it (even though I've already entered all of my payment information and clicked on "Complete Purchase" or whatever???), and they would then review the order on their order board, send me an email regarding "updated" shipping costs, taxes, and total, and then I would need to re-confirm that order (albeit with potentially different pricing and actual availability), and, if I still wanted to place the order based on the updated information, they would then actually charge me and ship it (???). I mean, I guess that's somehow better than refinancing my house to cover shipping fees, assuming the fees end up being lower that way, but what a stupidly convoluted ordering process.
Has anyone actually done it that way, and do the shipping fees actually come WAAAAAYYYY down? Even if they did, I'm still trying to wrap my head around why on earth they make it so complicated. I can't even imagine how many thousands of dollars they must lose every day because of people like me who see the insane shipping costs on the website, and then just decide to buy what they need elsewhere. Plus, they're paying people to manually review the orders, etc.??? Hell, even if I'd known about this sooner, do I really want to jump through all of those hoops and deal with nebulously fluid pricing, instead of just ordering from a non-dealer site, where I can at least see up front what my actual total would be and subsequently compare apples-to-apples, real-time, across websites?
Is this world getting exponentially stupider or is it just me? Wait, don't answer that.
I've come across the same situation a number of times....both on shipping charges and the price of the item itself. Generally, speaking to someone (when possible, ha ha) resolves the situation.
My (very limited) understand is that the pricing algorithms/matrixes/whatever simply come up with some anomalies from time to time; glitches. Crazy shipping charges as in your example, or a pound of coffee at $1695.00, or a radiator hose for $811.50...or whatever.
the pricing algorithms/matrixes/whatever simply come up with some anomalies from time to time; glitches.
Don't know what statistically qualifies as "from time to time", but I've seen it enough myself to think its not just a glitch. Some of these parts sales web sites seem to be just local Jaguar dealers tho that dabble in a little online parts sales on the side. They're probably not very sophisticated. More often I go to my local dealer where they know me and I can skip the shipping costs. If they charge me full retail, I console myself that at least the money is staying local and the taxes may buy a cup of asphalt to go toward patching that pothole I hit on the way.
I wish buying locally was an option. Unfortunately, my local dealer group (Hennessy in Atlanta) basically has a monopoly on JLR dealerships in town, and they charge 100%+ markups on parts. I even called JLR North America to complain and was told that it was out of their hands. They basically tried to say it was due to it being a luxury car, but I reminded them how many suspension parts (what I was buying at the time) were shared between Jags and Fords, and he kind of shut up. I also told him that dealers marking up JLR parts 100%+ would certainly deter me from ever buying another JLR vehicle in the future (I've owned 5 over the past 11 years), and I absolutely meant it. I feel like JLR can't get out of their own way. It reminds me of the story about the father and son bulls from the 80's movie, "Colors," with Robert Duval and Sean Penn (i.e., bad long-term strategy):
I even called JLR North America to complain and was told that it was out of their hands.
It is
They basically tried to say it was due to it being a luxury car, but I reminded them how many suspension parts (what I was buying at the time) were shared between Jags and Fords, and he kind of shut up.
He should've just been honest by saying the dealers buy the parts from Jaguar and can resell them for whatever price they see fit, wisely or unwisely.
I also told him that dealers marking up JLR parts 100%+ would certainly deter me from ever buying another JLR vehicle in the future (I've owned 5 over the past 11 years), and I absolutely meant it.
And if enough customers stop doing business with that dealer due to pricing then the dealer will have to change strategy or fail. Until or unless that happens it's, quite simply, "whatever the market will bear".
I am in North Carolina and I too recently ran in to crazy shipping prices and the cause was that I was behind a VPN - the site thought I was in Italy. Turned off the VPN and things returned to normal. Just a thought.
The video is pretty funny, so I thought a few folks might enjoy watching it. Those guys bring a passionate and humorously irreverent view of the automotive industry. That particular recent video was basically about the current nationwide price gouging by dealerships and dealer groups, and the manufacturers and buyers getting very upset about it. I also didn't really want to get into all of the additional insight I have, but what the hell...
Coincidentally, I started a data science and monetization company about a year ago and, while I can't mention any names or specifics, we now own a large pricing strategy project for a massive (many billions) automotive-focused business unit of a global conglomerate. The automotive-focused business unit, which includes many extremely familiar separate business names, provides products and services to help automotive dealers with strategy, insights, software, and other tools designed to grow and sustain their businesses more efficiently and profitably. In addition to the dealer-focused groups and many others, they also own a group which provides global inventory management solutions directly to a lot of automotive end-manufacturers (think of every brand of car you see every day). All of that is to say that we're right in the middle of what's going on across the entire automotive industry on a daily basis.
And, a lot of what we're seeing is exactly what I mentioned... bad long-term strategies by these dealers, as they continue taking advantage of the pandemic (global automobile shortage, supply chain issues, etc.) to greatly inflate the expense to consumers of buying and servicing vehicles. Not only is it extremely upsetting to the customers, but most of the manufacturers are becoming increasingly more upset about the "necessary evil" of dealers because of their recent price gouging tactics, especially in light of how successfully Tesla has completely disrupted the industry in many ways, not the least of which has been avoiding the government-mandated independent dealership selling and servicing process.
Many of the manufacturers are spending a lot more time and money strategizing heavily about how to unburden themselves of the antiquated model, as their interests can now be viewed as being in significant conflict with these dealers which they've been forced to utilize over countless decades. Obviously, the large automotive-focused business unit with which I'm working has a very vested interest in dealer success, and while the recent dealer profitability has been great for that business unit, and even though they've got a diverse portfolio which hedges their bets across the industry, one would imagine that it certainly has to be very frustrating for them to watch their humongous client base make such short-sighted decisions.
By the way, all of what I've said above is exclusively personal conjecture and speculation, and should in no way reflect the thoughts, opinions, or practices of any other individual or business entity, whether mistakenly implied, inferred, or otherwise.3
Back when I was in the dealership game, which spanned three decades of my life, pricing strategy (which can become rather complex, as I'm sure you realize) was a constant topic of discussion and was constantly changing. The philosophy I tried to instill (sometimes successfully, sometimes not) was "You can shear a sheep a hundred times but you can skin him only once". IOW, don't get greedy; lets get the customer to keep coming back to the store over the long haul rather than try hitting a high-profit 'home run' with every sale.
Obviously, though, the instant gratification derived from opportunistic price gouging is just too tempting for some to resist which, really, comes under the category of "there's nothing new under the sun".
I could write a book but, gah, it's a large chapter of my life that I'd mostly rather forget about.
Yep. We use multi-dimensional dynamic mathematical models to develop pricing strategy, but I couldn't agree more with your sentiments, i.e. don't try to sell somebody once and take advantage of them, because they'll probably never come back. Rather, make all transactions a win-win and develop a solid long-term relationship through trust and mutual respect, and they'll be a lot less likely to ever go anywhere else.
This industry attracts certain type of people... short term thinking is all their brains can muster for the most part.
As a whole they see the writing on the wall with EV taking over eventually and the current situation is how they are dealing with the prospect of losing all that maintenance revenue forever and becoming obsolete - cashing in while they still can.
As a whole they see the writing on the wall with EV taking over eventually and the current situation is how they are dealing with the prospect of losing all that maintenance revenue forever and becoming obsolete - cashing in while they still can.
Which has actually been happening, bit by bit, for quite a long time.
Dealership service and parts departments are, and always have been, expected to generate xxx-profit for the dealership but technology has reduced many of their sales opportunities. Sealed transmissions that never need servicing. DIS ignitions. Wheel bearings no longer need repacking, exhaust systems seemingly last forever, and so forth. Look at 'recommended services' in a 1980 owners manual versus 2000, and then versus 2020.
The goal, once upon a time, was to have the customer return to service department 3-4 times a year for required routine servicing. It was easy income for the dealer, obviously, but when done right also lends itself to building a longer-term relationship with customers. You wanted to shear the sheep. Greatly extended recommended service intervals, and fewer required services, have hampered that. Meanwhile, the expectation to produce xxx-profit (or, more commonly, ever-increasing profit ) remains the same....creating the temptation to skin the sheep.
My last 15 years in the industry was as a Fixed Operations Manager for a multi-line 'auto group'. My shear the sheep method was happily in place for most of that time. Towards the end the dealer principle told me, and I quote, "Retrain the service advisors to squeeze every ****ing nickel out of their customers".
I knew my career in the industry was ending, and it did.
Ha-ha! Time to order from them! I have some good buddies in London, and have actually thought more than a few times about asking them to buy something there, and then ship it to me (all at my cost, obviously). Most recently, it was my PowerFlex bushings, as they seemed a lot cheaper in the UK. I would've thought my Spires springs would've been worse due to the exchange rate and shipping, but they weren't too bad. Ultimately, I've always decided against it, though, as I didn't want them to go through all of the hassle. Hell, I can't even be bothered to return stuff to Amazon when all I have to do is put it on my front porch for free, so it would be hard for me to ask them to deal with that. Although, that Allisport intercooler is tempting me again. Ha-ha!
04-27-2022, 01:11 PM
Insane Shipping Prices and Super-Secret Ordering Process (Decoder Ring Required)
