Unless it's a really big thing like an inverter/charger, I can only afford to make one call to the boat and swap out a good part for the bad part. That is what customer's expect. Considering the time and travel involved, for a relatively inexpensive item, it hardly makes sense for me to pick up the bad part, send it in to the manufacturer to get it repaired, and then come out and reinstall it. That's what I do if the problem is with an inverter or an alternator that needs to be rebuilt. Something big or something hard to get. And I'm selling more new alternators these days because, for a few hundred dollars over the cost of a rebuild, I can supply a new, much higher output alternator. Little stuff does not fail. Wire, connectors, fuse blocks work forever if put in right. Anything with a moving part can fail, as can anything electronic or electrochemical, like batteries. It's the intermediate stuff that is a problem for me. Battery chargers, water pumps with solid-state speed controls, things like that. I bring out a new or refurbished part to swap. What do I do with the broken part?
For some things I sell, the answer is to send the piece back to the manufacturer to get it serviced or replaced. Sometimes I can get them to send out an advanced replacement, but they want to charge me and then credit my account when they get the defective unit. Then they send the repaired unit back to me and I'm stuck with it. Meanwhile, I pay freight for three shipments. If I had wanted to buy a spare to keep on the shelf I would have. By the time I sell it again, it could be a few years old and I may have to give a big discount. This is not the best of all possible answers. What I want to do is get an advance replacement locally, go to the boat, replace the part, then take it back to whomever. Happily, when I buy a part through the West Marine wholesale division, Port Supply, this is exactly what happens. I need to provide the order number under which I bought the part, which is not hard because I keep good records. I may need to call my sales rep to get the paperwork moving. I show up at the closest West Marine store with the part, make the swap on the boat, bring the old part back to the store. Story over. Customer happy. Minimum warranty time on my part. This is good. And my sales rep is very helpful on a whole range of issues.
The whole warranty service problem got worse when customer's started buying things on the internet. In itself, this is OK because then the warranty is their problem. But Internet merchants set customer's expectations for prices. The fact that States have not figured out how to collect sales taxes on most of these transactions puts local merchants another 7 percent behind. So the days when 40 or 50% margins covered up a lot of warranty issues are over. I make just enough on equipment sales to cover my cost of processing the transaction and keeping track of the material until it gets installed.
West Marine and Port Supply do not necessarily offer rock-bottom prices on everything they sell. But they are competitive. They do not offer everything. So I continue to deal with a range of suppliers. However, I am on the Port Supply "van route" and they deliver anything I order to my door for no extra charge. The savings in freight often makes up for the slightly higher price. I can get my sales rep on the phone easily to run internal interference when necessary, no automated phone system. I can fairly easily place orders on the web, which means I can deal with them after other people's normal business hours. The search capabilities on their website suck, so they are not perfect.
In my book all of this makes Port Supply an excellent supplier. Kudos, gentlemen. The service makes the difference.
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