Here’s the deal. We have an '89 Shadow with no heat or AC at the moment because the switch that activates the fan is dead. I ask Angie (who is a former mechanic) if she could fix it but it turns out to be too complicated with springs and stuff. So we take it to a dealer and have them look at it. At first they tell us they have to replace the entire control assembly, which would cost us some $300. All we want is the switch! Not gonna happen. I decide we should try to save money and try to do the work ourselves. I try to get the control assembly myself but am told to go to the dealer. I suggested to Angie to try a salvage yard but she wants to be sure we get what we need, so she goes back to the dealer. I had talked to one of their techs and she told that it’s $172 to order the assembly. Angie goes there to pay for the order and what do they try? They try to sell her just the $45 switch! Why the fuck couldn’t they have done that in the first place? Well, we already know that Angie isn’t about to replace just the switch so she has them order the entire assembly package. I hope it gets here before we go on vacation. I also hope that it doesn’t come unassembled.
I thought this rant would be highly critical of Dope Dealers. My contribution is therefore superfluous.
When you purchase parts from the dealer, you are likely to encounter such confusion on a regular basis. Trust me, I work for one.
There will be revisions to a part several times as the vehicle gets older, (Which in this case is well over ten years). So, in short, the part you wanted may have come only as an assembly a few months back and now, is available the way you desire. Parts counter people have only the memory of the last part they sold so, if the manner in which it is sold changes, they won’t know until you are ready to fork over the cash.
Hope this helps…
And I had hoped this would be a rant by a dealer about the suckiest parts of his vocation. I thought it would be absolutely fascinating.
[Big Lebowski thug]
Thanks a lot, asshole!
[/Big Lebowski thug]
Sometimes I think my very existence is superfluous. 
OK, but why could they have not offered to replace just the switch when we first brought the vehicle in two days prior to ordering the part? Seems to me they were trying to stick us with a larger than necessary bill, which is still what we ended up with. $172 for the assembly vs. $45 for the broken switch, plus labor if we had them do the work.
And I thought he would be the dope dealer doing the ranting. :eek:
We visited the dealer on Saturday and the part was waiting for us, good thing we opened the box before leaving the parts desk because it turned out to be the wrong one. So the clerk took it back and tried to get us the correct part, only to tell us earlier this week that what we wanted did not exist. Evidently what they call an “assembly” does requires assembly! Argh! All we want is a simple switch replaced! We told the dealer to go to hell (though in polite words) and had them refund our $172. Just a few minutes ago, I went to a scrapyard’s web site to see if they still have the part we need. They did and I asked them to ship it to us for about 1/5 of what the dealer was going to charge for a new part we couldn’t even use.
The part came today! We should have actual fan-forced heat soon. The only heat we have now depends on how fast we go, which doesn’t do much good while idling.