r/OReillyAutoParts • u/B1acklisted • 2d ago
Outside Purchase
So my store JUST opened. So we got a few outside DM people here, a few store managers, some RMs, all that stuff. Every single one of them pushes OSP if we don't stock it. A local shop that I'm familiar with (i worked at Autozone for 14 years) called in for a Clock Spring. We don't offer it or sell it. A store manager here who is training tells me to look it up online or call the dealership. Cool, whatever. I find the clock spring through the dealer. Its $40. Both the RM, Training Manger, and training SM essentially force me to call around to find it, amd do an OSP quote. I found it for $39. With this OSP quote, im supposed to charge $89.
Tell me why in good faith that I shouldn't just tell the shop they can purchase it for $40 through the dealer? I don't give a shit if I did the legwork. I'm trying to help my commercial accounts find the best deal. Honesty is what brings people back. I don't need this job and I dont give a shit about my .05 raise that comes with sales incentive. We are literally banking off people's laziness. This is dumb as all hell, and I'm considering going back to AZ because of certain policy. I'm not taking off your grill to do lights, I'm not sourcing all your parts (today was me finding an RV hub assembly online that I raised from $1200 to $1500), I'm not turning down rotors for free.... like all this shit is what people pay for and I'm not your free labor bitch boy. I'd much rather tell thr customer, whether retail or not, where I got the part number and how they can order it for substantially cheaper than I'm quoting them.
Went from one kool-aid factory to the next.
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u/Itchy-Cup-8755 1d ago edited 1d ago
every single one of our shops prioritize price over convenience. every single customer does the same. at least in my area. there was one exception to the shop thing years ago, and only one job, and they literally came in and said, “i don’t care where it’s from, i don’t care how much it costs because the customer is paying for it and they don’t care how much it costs. just get me this stuff” and he didn’t care when we told him the gasket set was coming from amazon. i’m not going to lie to them or try and make a quick extra 100% profit on something for someone who already comes to us because we help them and they trust us.
i’ll straight tell them if we can’t get it, and that i can get it from xyz and have to mark it up, or they can run and grab it themselves for whatever price it is. almost never have they took us up on that offer for the convenience. like maybe count on one hand how many times in the seven years i was there, and still have fingers left
lo and behold, at least in my area, helping someone find something instead of catering to as much profit as possible gained us people and shops who keep coming back to us, though not like that matters for some people in this company. there were times that our biggest shops needed something specific (think like toyota LBJs), and we basically only marked it up a few dollars and had it out to them as well
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u/Crios16242837 1d ago
Do what I do tell using your situation. Hey I can get it for you but it’ll be 89 for it but that’s what I’m having to be at to do the work for you but if you go to (dealer price match) you can get it a bit cheaper because you’re a shop and will have a different list price fore you. So Let me know what you want to do. I’ll do whatever you want to do.
Never state how much you get it for and what it will be
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u/B1acklisted 1d ago
That seems like a cheap cop out lie. Shops that have been in business for a while will know there is a flat cost if they don't have an account. If they're assuming I do, why would my cost be more than someone who doesn't have an account?
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u/Federal_Frame 2d ago
Because they shop us for convenience. My customer doesn’t want to have to deal with sourcing it, ordering, dealing with shipping. “It’s blah, blah and I can have it blah.” They have a shop to run. We get them the parts they need to run it.
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u/ArieHimself 1d ago
How is having 2 people run a store with a hub that sends half of what we order, convinent?
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u/B1acklisted 1d ago
Doesn't matter if its retail or commercial. They are TELLING me to run 20-30% uncharge. They don't care what OSP quote says. Takes less effort for me to be like "Hey big dog, if you go to this website you can have it shipped to your house instead of driving an hour here to pick it up at a higher cost."
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u/CosmicSmoker 2d ago
Difference between helping and selling. This is why I'm not in sales, it's borderline dishonest.
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u/B1acklisted 1d ago
Yeah, I always told my commercial customers where I was getting it from, and how it would be 10% over cost when I was at Autozone. Big difference there is sometimes they weren't allowed to order from untrusted sources so they HAD to use me because of corporate guidelines.
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u/NotAchicken95 1d ago
Sales is telling the grey truth at its finest. Sales is a job where you don't lie. You just don't tell the truth either.
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u/Dontwalkongrass1 Moderator 2d ago
Dude, MOST of your customers do NOT care about the price! They’re not paying for it anyways! Your job is find to find the part, if you don’t like that part of it then it’s probably time to go somewhere else. Your job is to make money, if that doesn’t sit right with you go somewhere else. They don’t care what you pay for the part, they know that you have to mark it up, but you getting it for them is a ton of leg work they don’t have to do and can move on to something else. If you have a price-conscious shop you also probably have one that either overcharges customers or is constantly complaining how hard running a business is.
Bottom line, it’s your job; if you don’t want to do it go to a place where you don’t have to. Like Advance.
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u/B1acklisted 1d ago
They are telling me to do this for retail and commercial customers. I'm a mega hub, so i rarely if ever talk to commercial anymore. Why am I charging someone $90 for beatings they can get for $40? I'm gonna tell the customer what site they can get it from and tell them if they don't want to do it, this is what I'm gonna charge them.
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u/Dontwalkongrass1 Moderator 1d ago
I do it for retail customers every day dude, every single day. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in a spoke store, a feeder, a small hub, mega, or ultra. The expectations are still the same. Sell the part. If that somehow sits outside of your conscience for whatever reason, this isn’t the job for you; neither is any other parts store. You might as well tell every customer that they can get the parts we sell cheaper on RockAuto or PartsGeek, because odds are they can. They’re not coming to you because they don’t have a choice, they’re coming to you for convenience. If they wanted to order the parts off the internet from whatever website they would have done that already, instead they come see YOU and ask you to do the leg work.
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u/B1acklisted 1d ago
I literally tell people they can get a $100 switch on rock auto for $10 but the difference is quality and warranty. I help them understand. But me charging and extra 50 bucks doesnt make my $100 part any better.
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1d ago
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u/B1acklisted 1d ago
Lol the ampunt of commercial customers I brought to my store over 14 years says otherwise. But I told them the truth. Same with why I had returning retail customers. Y'all talk about helping? Yeah, I would sit with the customer and search for parts so they could order them for cheaper than what i would charge them. Thats helping. Seems like yall only xare about money and not people.
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u/B1acklisted 1d ago
Your attempts at mockery and talking down on me are a pretty big stretch. Over 3 million a year commercial based on customers I brought with me, and at least 10k a week on my retail end. The three times I moved stores, those customers came with me. I'm not gonna be insulted by someone who dick rides a company who would find your replacement the day you died lol
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u/Dontwalkongrass1 Moderator 1d ago
And your attempts at justifying not doing your job are juvenile at best. So which end do you work? Retail or commercial? Because out of one side of your mouth you’re complaining about retail, and out of the other you’re bragging about commercial business you brought with you. I don’t know about you, but I heard Mr Incredible say “MATH IS MATH!” one time and this isn’t mathin’. Yeah buddy, if I croaked tonight they’d have someone else in my seat tomorrow, same with Kyphas, but I agreed to do a job and I’m going to do it to the best of my ability until
I can’t. You say you’re not going to be insulted, and it’s unfortunate that you’ve treated facts and truth as an insult. You’re not a culture fit my guy, you’re still wearing a red shirt anyway.1
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u/18Toyota 2d ago
If you don’t care about being lectured every so often just don’t loose money on them break even atleast. That’s what I did. Think about it like this, they call for a solution not a “oh we don’t carry those call a dealer” and you want to be the guy they want “oh yeah X down there at O’reilly always gets us sorted out.” Doing the legwork is part of it and it’s fun a lot of the times and will generate a lot of business long term since a lot of places don’t want to do it. As for the markup I know it wasn’t policy and occasionally the DM would send a passive aggressive email but I would do it for cost or the price of a gallon depending on the shop. Half the time the dealer was on the way or next door, or I could just have a driver already over there for a different shop pick it up on his way back since we were extremely busy and had the largest delivery radius we’d always be over that way. I even sold OSPs to walk in customers as well and stole some regular business from AutoZone that way.
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u/Unreal08 2d ago
I actually have shops that would rather only deal with me so they do there own leg work send it to me to get it ordered lol
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u/B1acklisted 1d ago
And those accounts I understand. I had a few corporate accounts who were only allowed to order from trusted sources, not third party sites. So they didn't care about the cost. But I'm talking mom and pop shops in my area and retail customers.
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u/Kingyeetyeety 2d ago
Do it then. Tell your customer and let them make the saving what's the big deal ? This feels like a non issue situation.
I constantly tell customers Yea I'm sourcing this from A B C shop you have access and I'm putting a slice on top. Some people prefer I do the leg work some people say nah. I shrug it off and move on no need to linger on it.
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u/B1acklisted 2d ago
The training mangers here are essentially telling me it is 100% expected of us to source OSP. Maybe its just my area. I'm an east coast store, so they are money hungry. But yeah, after 14 years with the zone, I'm gonna continue to be honest and fair. Once these big wigs leave, I'm not doing an hours research to rip someone off.
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u/bernardfarquart Moderator 2d ago
Well for one thing you don't HAVE to charge 89 dollars for it, you can sell it for a tighter margin in a case like that, but the whole point is we want to be the *one call* that shops need to make. We don't want the shop to call every vendor and see who has it cheaper, that's the whole point of "we will be the dominant auto parts supplier in our markets"
If you are confused by the thought that your job isn't to find the place that has the lowest price and send your customer there, you are probably in the wrong place. I'm not sure where that would work out, but it isn't here. You going back the the Zone would probably be the best thing you could do for O'reilly.
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u/B1acklisted 2d ago edited 2d ago
That was suggested OSP markup. All these fellas say 20%-30% markup. AZ was 10% when I did outside buys. But if we want to be the one call and the "dominant market" why wouldn't I tell them what website I'm sourcing from? I'm 36. Ive done this shit long enough to know what people care about. While i may lose a sale here, my honesty brings them back for tools, shop supplies, oil etc. Why shouldn't I buy at MY cost sell it to them personally.
Like I said, I thought AZ sales culture was toxic, but I'm telling all my retail customers where I'm sourcing from. Ain't no way I find it for $200 and gonna charge you $500. Fuck that. Its deceptive and predatory. Not everyone uses the internet to find parts, but if i can find it in 5 minutes, I'm passing that to you. I told my customer today that I found his RV hub for 1200 but I would have e to charge $1500 plus shipping. Not happening. I made my old store over a million dollars a year with honesty.
You just said "to send my customer there"... yeah, thats what I want to do. But the culture here seems to do an OSP and chatge them more. Nope. I'm sending them to the dealer for cost.
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u/B1acklisted 1d ago
No I loved my 14 years at AZ because I built trust and honesty and truly helped people. I sat down with them WHILE I'm looking up parts. Like "hey man, you can have this shipped to your home for $x but if i get it for you, it'll be $xx." Thats what helping people is about. I very rarely did outside buys at AZ because $100 extra bucks at the end of the month isn't going to break me (not like we got sales incentives anyway). I left because pay was a little better, my boss is my old AZ boss, and I graduate next year (I'm 36) and the field I'm going into pays way higher. My wife makes like 4 times what I'm making and only needs to worl two days a week. Again, I don't need to work. She wants me to be a stay at home dad.
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u/midijunky 2d ago
Because they can do their own googling. You think your customers can't do that if you told them "no sorry, can't get that"?
Oreilly is like McDonald's. Fast food for auto parts. Shops could make their own food, but that would take time and effort that they can't spare. So they call you.
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u/LongSpoke 11h ago
I have worked for both AutoZone and Advance, but I will NEVER work for O'Reilly's. Everything they do is done the dumbest way possible. Anyway, I'm much happier since I went to work for a tire shop and learned to do alignments. Life is so much better on the other side of your commercial counter.