Buying OEM parts online for my Toyota (or VW !)

I recently needed a bunch of parts for my Toyota; a mirror, a rubber plug, new lugnuts and decided to shop online in addition to my local dealership.

I quickly discovered that my local dealerships Internet Presence is a bit, uhm, “challenged”.  Their idea of ordering parts online is “use this form to email our parts department”.  NOT quite the experience I was looking for, so I Google “Buy Sienna OEM parts online”.  I had recently been doing the same for my VW, and quickly realized that the majority of these sites are all the same, but in a GOOD way … I’ll explain:

Dealerships do three things well: sell cars, fix cars, sell parts.  That’s it. The fixing part is a bit debatable (heh), but one thing is for sure: they suck at building web sites. My local Toyota dealerships website is prima fascia evidence of that.  

Enter TradeMotion.   From what I can tell, they provide a turnkey “internet presence” for dealership’s parts counters.   This is a great thing for local dealerships – they don’t have to learn how to manage websites, get an instant “customized” web presence, and voila that cherished fire hose of online sales.  Or at least garden hose.

The sites all feature the same basic programming, and all appear to be hosted on the same set of servers as well, (see that “siteid” parameter ;). Each site gets their own slightly customized look and feel, but to any experienced web developer you’ll quickly tell they’re all based on the same framework, which is fine by me BECAUSE:

TradeMotion provies the actual OEM catalogs for all the supported vehicles.  Throw in your vehicle info and you get ACTUAL DIAGRAMS.  Oddly enough though, not all sites have the diagrams so I’m guessing they are an “upcharge” the dealers pay for.  If that’s true, and you’re a dealer, keep paying that upcharge. The difference between having the catalog and NOT having the catalog is a big one, and was the quickest way I “short listed” sites.

The price variance between all the sites isn’t that large, which makes sense sense because these parts all come from the same suppliers, via the same distribution channels, etc.  However, the shipping and response times on them can vary.

In the end I saved over 60 dollars by buying from PartzNet.com – which is really Conicelli Toyota in Conshohocken, PA.  The experience was fantastic.  Online I narrowed down the parts I needed, and when I still wasn’t sure about one I called in with my VIN and the specialist on the other end got me the exact number so I could place my order online.  THEN – get this – they sent me an email confirming my purchase, to which I replied “Hey, I screwed up and forgot to change the quantity of lug nuts to 3 and I really don’t want to pay extra shipping”.  Shortly after, the manager wrote back “no worries, we just fixed it on the computer and it’s all shipping as one order”.  How is THAT for service !

In the end, I had a great experience buying my parts online.  Thanks to TradeMotion, the mystery of selecting a part was removed because I would peruse graphical catalogs and figure out exactly what the price number is, and then comparison shop it.  In the old days, that could take days alone to do: now you can do it all in an hour or so all with a cold PBR within reach.

The folks at PartZNet.com / Conicelli Toyota in Conshohocken PA were great to work with, and ultimately their combination of embracing the Internet (give that Internet a big ole hug), competitive pricing and great service made them a total WIN.  How ’bout that 😉 Next time I need OEM parts for this van (and they way my wife drives, that could be any day now, nyuck nyuck) I’m going straight back to them.

If you’ve been thinking about buying your OEM parts online, don’t hesitate.  Certainly call your local dealerships and give them a chance to win your business – after all, more of the profits will stay in your own local community – but don’t be afraid to Google and find yourself a nice TradeMotion site. They aren’t the slick, fancy sites like you may be used to from Google or Facebook, but they’re very functional and you can save a load of money.