Spare parts and the internet
As dismantlers we all sell parts. Our ELV’s are filled with parts and the only thing we need to do is to find receivers for our parts. Of course this sounds simpler than it is in reality. Sometimes it is simple. Customers know where to find us, we sometimes have long relation ships with them, customers start to search for us if parts are very expensive or hard to obtain. We have our networks, we are on the internet there’s digital systems where potential customers can do searches and end up with us and there’s the digital platforms we all know.
The digital systems mentioned here, are in most cases national internet systems hat are often related to the dismantler’s associations, or at least dedicated to the dismantler’s industry. In other words: only dismantlers can sell their parts on these sites. These sites and their providers have to keep a reputation of good service. So there’s not much to worry about them.
The digital platforms are the Ebay like platforms. It’s not only Ebay, it’s also many national operating platforms, often more than one in a country. There are perfect systems to sell our parts and be found by customers, but the problem is that they also serve illegals and criminals. A customer can hardly distinct the offer of an ATF from an illegally dismantled or stolen part. In many cases our parts outprice themselves as our legals status has costs which illegals and criminals don’t have.
It even goes worse. In some countries, often parts are offered as if they come from an ATF. Some parties are not afraid to use our names, logos and our layout or style and pretend they have the requested parts. An unsuspecting customer will make the payment, no part will arrive and the abused ATF gets blamed for not delivering. This scam is really bad practice and we need to be protected against this, as it’s impossible to protect ourselves against scamming.
For this we (EGARA, but on national level the association might be more effective) need to address this problem to both our governments/authorities and the (national) internet platforms directly. We need to try to convince both that only ATFs should be able to offer used parts on the internet. Platforms should verify that companies are legal (chamber of commerce numbers or permits or membership of Association or PRO, whatever works and can be checked). Or parts need to origin from legal cars meaning the VIN is given with the part or the seller can relay to the ATF where the part came from. Anyhow, scam and illegal parties need to be avoided by the platforms.
EGARA will plea for rules for platforms operating in the EU. Tackling illegals and fraud starts with legislation first. The next step will be enforcement. To be effective it would help if not only EGARA asks the EC for attention, but this request should come from all members. It’s not a problem we will solve overnight, but if we all keep on pulling and pushing, some results should be feasible. The more directions the same message comes from, the better. Both the EC and our national governments need to helps us against scam and unfair competition. But we need to ask attention and we need to propose solutions. Offering solutions works best and often we know the key of a problem. We will keep you posted on this topic.
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