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Old 05-11-2018, 11:24 AM   #22
clyde
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rumatt View Post
I'm with you on the manufacturer part. But the dealer is marking them up more than just "a bit". A random dude on the internet is selling them for 30% cheaper and presumably still making a profit.

The dealer is not only getting the labor income, but raping him for $2300 of pure profit from the shocks as well - profiting from Audi selling parts that don't last. They're in this together.
At a top line, I don't really disagree with you. A 33% dealer mark up on their cost for parts? It's a lot, but about what I'd expect from lugnuts to long blocks for the most inexpensive appliance cars to near-exotic cars from major nameplates. When the part price goes up, the mark up goes up in dollars. Yeah?

Even so, comparing what a dealer pays for a part to what a random internet dude pays may be a fair comparison. Or it may not. I don't have the information to know in this case. But, I do know that suppliers charge different customers different pricing for a variety of reasons.

Random internet dude says Delphi is the only source for those shocks. If true, do we know Delphi is charging random internet dude the same as Audi? Do we know the only difference between the shocks Delphi sells to Audi and random internet dude are that these went into this shipping box and those went in that one? Do we know that Audi doesn't have testing requirements on each shock and only those that pass get sold to Audi while ones that fail, but are still good enough to use get sold to random internet dudes at discounted prices? Do we know Delphi replaces defective units at no cost for both Audi and random internet dude?

And then Audi resells the parts to their dealers, presumably with some level of markup added.

It's a expensive part with a short lifespan on a super expensive car that generally don't get and aren't expected to rack up many miles. Sure, it's a racket, but this is what's been going on with these types of cars since long before any of us were buying our own cars. When you buy a car like that and then insist on having all work performed by the dealer and using only genuine Audi parts (even when there are better and cheaper alternatives), you've bought into playing your role in that racket.

Sure, it kind of blows, but meh.
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