Parts geek dot com is a freaking ripoff.

[shoebee2]

32 dollars to ship 2 inner fender wells.

Rock Auto takes 8 dollars to ship same item.

 

Parts geek will not accept phone calls, order cancelations or complaints.

What a ripoff. POS operators like them should be put out of business.

 

Buyer beware. Their prices seem good until you see the shipping added on. No way to change it.

30 DOLLARS, AMERICAN, PER ITEM!

Freaking thugs.

[ThosL]

There are many ways to fight back legally.  Hope you get some justice.

[Rooster2]

I have heard others complain.........prices and delivery generally good at Parts Geek, but customer service is non existent.

[shoebee2]

Sure, the price per item was good. Competitive. It's the outrageous shipping. Cost of shipping is determined by ....errrr....shipping companies with some markup for the vendor to cover handling. Places like parts geek don't have an inventory. They call supplier and supplier ships.

It's a freakin racket. Not my circus, not my monkeys. I didn't order the stuff. My kid did and he learned a hard lesson. For him 30 dollars is a lot. That's not the point though.

Places like parts geek take advantage of people and that pisses me off!

Grrrrrrrrrr

[Subie4me]

Yup, unfortunately that is how alot of these places operate. Give you a good deal--but ya better pay attention to shipping cause they pump it up bigtime. Same thing applies to E-bay. I put these kind of sellers on my SH$T list.

[matt167]

$32 is probably

[Fairtax4me]

Same thing applies to Rockauto, Jegs, take your pick of any other online retailer. They all ship from multiple warehouses, sometimes the parts you need are in a warehouse on the other side of the country, (the world even), and it might cost an arm and a leg to get it depending on what kind of deal that retailer has worked with the carriers they use.

You just have to pay attention to the shipping charges, and shop around for the best combo of purchase price + shipping.

[mikaleda]

Ya that's the problem with ordering online. I've used partsgeek.com once and I bought a o.e. Bosch front o2 sensor for a 99 outback for $50 free shipping which was a third of what it was anywhere else. I didn't have any issues though so I might have just been lucky.

[mikaleda]

I always go for the free shipping when possible so there is less surprises at checkout

[DaveT]

Yes, you always have to check shipping charge before ordering.  eBay, Amazon, anyplace, really.  My experiences with the few low price high shipping charge orders, was typically they are the worst to deal with if something isn't right, so I don't order form those type of sellers, unless I think about it a lot, and accept the risk.

[Loyale 2.7 Turbo]

Kinda remembers me when Amazon sent me a pretty small TV card for an old computer I used to have, inside a Big Box, that came inside another Bigger Box... that was a Huge packaging for a tiny device, and the people at the local Courier and Cargo company, asked the Volumetric measurement's price... the tiny TV card ended costing me twelve times more than the cost of itself at the Amazon web site... 

 

The business seems to be more on the extra shipping & handling fees, than on the parts that they sell; in fact is like some Restaurants, where the Meal itself is not expensive, but the beverages costs surpasses their regular price three times. 

 

Recently, I discovered that Amazon offers a permanent free shipping by an annual fee, pretty much like the Pricesmart membership business system that I've seen here in Honduras... That is a good idea for a repair shop or a business.

 

Kind Regards.

[idosubaru]

i get that you're venting and the general customer service on low cost options is frustrating.  but it doesn't sound like parts geek did anything wrong - if the shipping costs weren't known, should have moved on to the next option. and you generally do "get what you pay for" with cheap product sometimes - no customer service for instance. this is a great treaching moment, rather than angry at PG, teach them to be a smart and savy buyer. 

[sirtokesalot]

junk yard 5 bucks a side

[shoebee2]

grossgary I hear ya man.  He learned his lesson. If it had been me I would have shook my head and told myself to be less stupid next time. 

 

On the other hand, PG is not a place I will ever buy from because of this issue.  Not that they charge outrageous shipping to the unwary but because there is no recourse.  No way to complain or cancel an order. That in addition to a company policy of fleecing the unwary makes them thieves in my book. nuff said.

In the larger scheme of things it is a pretty cheap lesson for a kid. 

[Rooster2]

Because Parts Geek, and other on line parts retailers have crappy customer service, I have found it much better to buy on line from Advance Auto Parts. They always have discount coupons available on line to lower prices, and offer in store pick up, if the part you order is available and in stock at a nearby store. Even if the parts are shipped to you, at reasonable cost, and not what you want, it is so easy to return the unwanted parts to any Advance store for an instant credit that is put back on your charge card. If a "core" charge is involved, that too, is an easy core return to any Advance store.

 

This amounts to excellent customer service from Advance. I am sold on their business approach.

[AdventureSubaru]

So far I can vouch for the customer service of rock auto. Had 2 returns over the years and both went smooth.

 

Only had one transaction with parts geek and it was as expected. Good stuff and they were the cheapest at the time.

 

As for shipping - different places get different rates. Not sure how this is put together, but I paid $30. to ship an intake manifold last week, so their price isn't crazy, they just aren't as cheap as others.

 

And yeah. Cheap lesson in the long run. There's no legal recourse for folks who wont read a payment summary before they check out. And you can nearly always save some $$$ by spending some time doing price comparisons/quality comparisons between ebay, amazon, rock auto and such and the chain stores.

 

We all get smarter as we go as long as we take the time to learn.

[AdventureSubaru]

There are many ways to fight back legally.  Hope you get some justice.

 

Do tell? Pretty sure when someone checks out and pays for something they are taking the burden upon themselves that they actually bought it.

 

No one is suggesting anything illegal has gone on here except that the shipping costs were higher than their competetors though their prices cheaper. What was illegal and how does one fight back legally against a legal transaction?

[Rooster2]

Do e-commerce companies that ship via U.S Postal, Fed-Ex, UPS, etc., do so with large contractual discounts in place with the shippers?? I have sort of guess this, when I had a return to an e-bay vendor. It cost me probably twice as much to return the product, then what the vendor paid to ship it to me via U.S. Postal. If this is the case, then the vendors are making a profit on charging more for shipping, then what it cost them.

[AdventureSubaru]

I suspect there's a discount with large vendors. I get a discount just by purchasing postage through ebay or paypal. I wonder if parts geek marked them up or simply has different or no discount.

 

Guaranteed it would cost me more than 32 dollars to ship 2 fender wells. Probably more than double that. $8. will ship you a small padded envelope these days so there's got to be bulk discounts or something somewhere.

[ccrinc]

Do e-commerce companies that ship via U.S Postal, Fed-Ex, UPS, etc., do so with large contractual discounts in place with the shippers?? I have sort of guess this, when I had a return to an e-bay vendor. It cost me probably twice as much to return the product, then what the vendor paid to ship it to me via U.S. Postal. If this is the case, then the vendors are making a profit on charging more for shipping, then what it cost them.

 

Well, it depends.

 

USPS does not give any discounts, except the minor ones available to anyone when you order online.

 

UPS, FedEx (ground), DHL, etc. do give volume discounts, but you have to be Amazon-sized to get much of anything. Mostly, it costs more than USPS for almost anything.  We practically always ship small stuff via USPS Priority Mail. It's faster, easier and less expensive, AND trackable.

 

Now, engine-sized stuff: that's an entirely different ballgame.  We use LTL (less than truckload) motor freight all over N. America and get enormous discounts, but that still doesn't make it cheap.  The price is included in our engine prices.  On some we make money, on some we lose money.  One size doesn't fit all if it has to go from Denver to Maine vs. Denver to Albuquerque.   The headache of having to price each shipment individually for customers is (somewhat) offset by the fact that we just decided this was simpler and easier for everyone concerned.

 

For large, light weight items, dimensional shipping comes into play and that is never pleasant.

Edited February 16, 2016 by ccrinc