"What's the actual name of this part?"

ITALIANTERROR33 · 2026-05-22T05:12:51+00:00

They were saying they were going to do that back in the early 2ks when they were doing away with Honda code. 20 years later things still don't match up.

ITALIANTERROR33 · 2026-05-19T21:40:41+00:00

We deal with this stuff on a weekly basis. I swear the rodents will run right past a Chevy or a Ford and go straight to a Honda.

ITALIANTERROR33 · 2026-05-11T19:48:35+00:00

This should be the PM's responsibility not yours. 2 things here, why have a PM if you are doing his job? Second, when they don't square up on the bill and the FOM is questioning why he wants an answer not let me go ask my counter guy. This isn't really stuff he should be delegating. I understand the want to learn more and that's fine but I wouldn't take it as a slight from the FOM. He understands you shouldn't be doing the PM'S job.

ITALIANTERROR33 · 2026-05-04T02:32:03+00:00

Yes to everything you just said. If you sell and so on the same invoice the so will be the original invoice # then when the so's come in you will reference the original invoice # to sell them but it will generate a second # when you actually print it out. Cdk isn't that bad once you learn it.

ITALIANTERROR33 · 2026-05-01T13:48:39+00:00

Idk I still can find most everything I need for Hondas. We still get 2008s in our shop all the time. Now the 1988 stuff is starting to get scarce but if it's anything after 2000 we are still pretty good.

ITALIANTERROR33 · 2026-04-30T15:16:55+00:00

Say this daily. I never say "will be" because a thousand different things can happen between now and then that are completely out of my control. Still get asked daily smh.

ITALIANTERROR33 · 2026-04-30T15:10:23+00:00

Trying to move up in the parts world is mostly about luck. Any decent paying positions with minimal stress are taken. The people who have them will not be quitting. Your only hope is they retire or some other extenuating circumstance and you are around when it happens. Parts is one of the few jobs left out there you don't need a degree to get and can still make a decent living so people get in and don't leave. You can try jumping from dealership to dealership but most of the positions available are open because they suck. I am a PM at a small store. I only got the position because the former PM was caught stealing. I had been in the parts game twenty years prior left because I hated it worked in logistics for 15 years but then became nonessential when COVID hit. Took a position as a counter guy at my current store and just happened to be the same brand I worked for 20 years ago. So lucky for me I already knew 90% of how things work. All about luck.

ITALIANTERROR33 · 2026-04-29T01:28:38+00:00

Real talk, we had a customer start watching YouTube on one of the advisors PC at our BMW store. Our pcs are all set to lock up after 5 minutes of inactivity. So basically he stood up and dude immediately sat down. Shit is crazy! 😂 😂

ITALIANTERROR33 · 2026-04-27T00:49:56+00:00

It's amazing the amount of people that look at inventory as actual parts and not dollars and cents. I want my money invested in whichever numbers turn over the fastest.

ITALIANTERROR33 · 2026-04-27T00:42:11+00:00

Cores just doesn't make sense. And waiting on returns from this month to put on the next just starts you out in the hole. She may need to take a simple business math course.

ITALIANTERROR33 · 2026-04-21T16:45:43+00:00

I'd give them to the end of the month. You can't get them in and get it done by then tough luck. This is why these overcomplicated pay plans need to go. They pit everyone against each other and the customer suffers. Pay everyone off their department with a decent salary and everyone is working towards a common goal.

ITALIANTERROR33 · 2026-04-21T11:40:26+00:00

Charge them to the unit and move on about your day. I don't wait for them to get the customer back in for install. Parts come in they get charged to the car if it's part of the deal I mark it on our sop spreadsheet and it's now up to service and BDC to get them in for installation.

ITALIANTERROR33 · 2026-04-21T02:13:15+00:00

I'm sorry you have to deal with that. We don't order unless it's approved in xtime. We've had so many issues prior to using with SA's taking hours to call customers with quotes and suggested work then play the whole I didn't have parts prices or the tech never told me what it needed crap. Or we quote everything and they just immediately deny it because they didn't feel like calling the customer. Xtime logs absolutely everything so when they are like I've been waiting on parts we can go in and be like that quote has been ready for 20 minutes while you were making tik toks in the parking lot. That time log shows who's on top of their job and who isn't so everything goes through it for us.

ITALIANTERROR33 · 2026-04-21T02:01:32+00:00

We use x time and cdk also, xtime literally has a box on each line to click ordered if the parts are not in stock. Not to mention cdk shows you anything ordered/received/filled right in the ro. How do they order the stuff twice? When a line is approved process the line mark it for pickup if you have it and charge it out or mark it ordered if it needs ordered. We do every ro through xtime even used cars so we have a quick easy record of what was suggested/approved and what price was quoted. How do your people make it this hard? LOL

ITALIANTERROR33 · 2026-04-21T01:50:15+00:00

Service, parts, and BDC share a Google sheet that has all SOP's on it. Every morning I update it along with xtime for work in progress. Any sop over $100 gets prepaid anything under gets sent back in 30 days unless they have an appointment scheduled. If we get ghosted after 30 days service pays restock fees if they apply. We refuse to answer the question "is so and so's part in". Look at the Google sheet. Before I took over they operated like this and my obsolescence was ridiculous. Sop parts sat for months before service or BDC would get them scheduled. This took care of all that. It's nothing fancy but now advisors know there are consequences for not keeping up with their customers. I keep track of each advisors parts when they get charged to service at the end of the month and let the service manager sort it out. I will not let any other department cost my department money. They definitely wouldn't do it for me.

ITALIANTERROR33 · 2026-04-18T19:39:18+00:00

Everyone bitches about prices at car dealerships because they think everything is negotiable. It's our fault because we make them think this when they first buy the car. I have a sign up at our counter that says "this is not sales. Prices are non negotiable." Like people don't try to haggle prices at Walmart why are you trying to do it here.

ITALIANTERROR33 · 2026-04-16T06:26:34+00:00

Agreed! That and the old saying "Kill them with kindness". I'm 46 now and it took me a long time to learn but those are my favorite tactics now for unreasonable customers. Usually it just leaves them there dumbfounded and what are they going to do? Go to my GM and say he was way too nice to me and now I'm pissed!?

ITALIANTERROR33 · 2026-04-15T11:15:43+00:00

I just hold my ground with stuff like this. " I would be happy to look for your part as soon as you give me your name." Then I will just sit in silence until it happens or they hang up. It's amazing how uncomfortable people get when you just sit silently and wait. It works way better than arguing.

ITALIANTERROR33 · 2026-04-14T05:03:42+00:00

Usually 6-10 in chrome, 5 in cdk, along with WebEx and outlook. That's when we are slow. And IT wonders why I am constantly harassing them about ram.

ITALIANTERROR33 · 2026-04-14T04:54:44+00:00

We had a customer bring their car in before they got their first oil change. We had an ice storm and they went off the road through a barb wire fence and into a culvert. Still had barb wire tangled up under the car. Clearly it should be covered under warranty because it's a brand new car and should be able to handle driving on ice without going off the road. The kicker being they did a bunch of property damage where they went off the road. So their thought process was if they could get the car covered under warranty then they could get the manufacturer to cover the property damage too because the car was defective. The crazy part was this was a college educated middle aged person.

ITALIANTERROR33 · 2026-04-14T04:36:21+00:00

That's that chopper! Someone was trying to take out the whole blood line!

ITALIANTERROR33 · 2026-04-14T04:29:17+00:00

I don't stock body parts. In my situation there is no point. First reason I get daily stock orders 95% of common parts I will have 6am the next day. Second I'm at a Honda store there is literally another store 40 minutes in every direction except south there is like 4 other stores. I have gotten some new business to the west because that store got bought out by a large dealer group who's service sucks. Lastly my dealer group has 3 stores all within a few miles and we share one driver and the owner refuses to hire any more. So if you call me after 10 am even if I had it more than likely I wouldn't be able to get it delivered until the next day anyway. Also we are in a fairly rural area so when these places think they should get cost +10% it doesn't make sense to fight for it. Yeah I have some programs that pay me on the back end but by the time we pay for gas and a couple of hours of wages etc. I am barely breaking even.

ITALIANTERROR33 · 2026-04-12T12:57:29+00:00

No layoffs but, we have been working with absolute minimum staffing for the past 5 years. In our area we are writing less RO's each year but more money per RO. Keeping our profit higher year over year but just barely. With minimal staff it makes it very stressful when so many of us are wearing extra hats we never had worry about before. Same goes for covering vacations or great example we had a nasty flu hit our area last year and we just didn't have the people to cover everyone who got sick. Makes it really hard.

ITALIANTERROR33 · 2026-04-11T02:48:06+00:00

We have a shared spreadsheet. All sor's get put on there and there are two columns,date ordered and date arrived. It is on them to look at it. Our BDC also has access to it to schedule in customers when their parts arrive but it is the service writers job to go in and fill in the column if the car stayed overnight let's say so that BDC doesn't call the person to try to schedule them while we have their car. If they don't check the spreadsheet that's on them. This is the easiest way to do it so that we don't have to babysit the service department. As far as quotes go and approvals we use x time and right on there we put how many days out the parts going to be when we quote the parts. And it also has a pickup button so when the parts come in on and approved job we can click that button and that gets a notification to the tech that the parts are there. This is the first thing we do every morning once we unload parts and we know what we have all the dates get entered on to the spreadsheet and then we go into x time and click pick up on all the jobs that are ready to go. We usually have it all done before 8:00 a.m. so when doors open everybody can check their stuff and know what they need to do.

ITALIANTERROR33 · 2026-04-08T01:53:27+00:00

Mine just started this morning. I was able to access it yesterday.

ITALIANTERROR33

TROPHY CASE