For those of us with English cars, buying parts from England is a natural choice. There are lots of stores providing classic car parts. So what are they like? Each time I do business with a Classic car parts supplier, I will share my experience with the shop/supplier.
This time is SCParts in UK.
SCParts
Web site: http://scparts.co.uk/
I have used SCParts a couple of times, in small scale for my Triumph and also bought a complete exhaust system for my Jaguar. Parts have been good, no problems with them so far (the exhaust system is still unwrapped, though). Deliverance to Norway was normal speed, just about the average one week from order to delivered on the door.
There are two very positive things worth mentioning about SCParts :
1) The catalogues they have are mostly excellent! I’ve just used a few, and I like the simple, still detailed drawings and also they contains some extra drawings that I am missing in competitors catalogues.
2) The adds/marketing material they print is also great, easy to read and see in magazines and online. Good job by marketing.
The parts, as mentioned, seems to be of good quality – as one should expect.
However there is a few black clouds, making SCParts not my first choice.
1) The web shop, or in general the web site, is probably as bad as it can get. I have trouble figuring out how it could be much less user friendly. The design is far from pretty. The part search is fairly fast, that is positive. But it is not really a part search, but a look-up on price for an item number you know. You cannot search for part names, only part numbers. This is all close to class-worst. What a market they are missing from not having a proper web shop!
2) Newsletter and mail contact. Well, this is a chapter for it self. At some point I signed up for the newsletter. And I got them (so that works), but if you dislike receiving a lot of newsletters, this might not be right for you. And if you dislike the fact that it is going to be very hard getting removed from the newsletter list again, then don’t sign up for this one.
I started receiving newsletter from 5 different SCParts senders, plus , and it came in a lot each week. I contacted each of them be removed from the list. I got answer from two of them – from sales and a more professional response from enquiries (which I agreed could send a few). However I still receive newsletters from multiple addresses, and gave up and asked IT to block the sender domain to stop it for good.
There are also a few other stories that made me question their sales force’s knowledge. I was looking for some company to fix my Triumph TR6 engine, convert to lead free top and fit a new cam shaft. Amongst many, I contacted SCParts, they could not do this, which is obviously fine. Some time later I was called up by their sales department, they had a brand new TR6 engine – I could have it for £2k, do I want it? I little hard to decide there and then, especially when the sales person had no knowledge about the motor. Was it set for carburetor or injection, what kind of cam shaft was fitted, what is included. This I/the sales person, newer found out.
This kind of behavior, combined with newsletter and web site issues, does not give a professional impression. Do they really want to project this image? The catalogues and marketing material is great, so it’s odd that the same quality is not to find in the latter areas.
Overall rating: 4 / 10.
This is my just my personal opinions, based on my experience. Your experience might be different, feel free to comment on this. This article will be updated if new information comes to the table. These incidents and experiences have happened in the last three years or so. My article is not about comparing prices, so as long as this is not central to the experience, I will leave this topic out.
