It is easy to sink a fortune in parts, that may or may not sell.
But a customer that wants a 4$ part will have to wait until I make an order,
as anything I order costs me at least $9 to get in. If the customer wants
to pay the $9 shipping, I'll order it right away.
I am a nice guy, but not an idiot.....
That's the way it should be too. Any one who runs a small engine repair business or even just a saw repair business can't possibly be expected to have all the parts on hand for every different saw they work on. Shipping has to be paid for, either it's on the bill up front or included in the mark up.
I am real small potatoes but do a fair amount of just saw repair. I am not a dealer of any particular brand but have been in retail/resale supply of building products for 27 yrs so I have a fair understanding of the business side of things. If I have three saw jobs needing parts and perhaps I need something myself I divide the shipping by 4 and spread the cost out as evenly as possible. If I get free shipping on an order then everyone gets free shipping.
That said though it annoys me no end to have to pay shipping on parts from a dealer of the same brand. I believe if you are the dealer of, say Husky then you should not be charging shipping on Husky parts. The only time charging should be permissible is if I want the parts pronto and am willing the extra shipping or the dealer ships the parts directly to me the customer.
I also see that, as was said earlier, the dealer is stuck in the middle where the distributor charges them shipping so they have no choice but to pass it on. It speaks volumes about the whole business situation. It was not to long ago that manufactures were happy to be selling product and willing to get spare parts to the dealers as fast and inexpensively as possible.
We have to face it, it costs a lot of money to be in this business and have and maintain place to from which to do business from. And there is not tremendous money to be made from repair work only. So for every repair job you do and don't charge the shipping cost to that's another $10-$15 lost on the total bill. In my world that's 10% or so of the usual labor costs on a saw repair job.
It's all in the wording, would you rather pay $100 for the parts plus $10 shipping or would you rather pay $110 for the parts and get free shipping? Either way you pick I'm flexible. LOLOLOLOL!!!