I love saving money even if it isn't mine
 

We have a steam cleaner outside my machine shop and the other day some numbskull backed into it with a forklift and cracked a plastic housing on what looked like a large filter.
It turns out it is a "hydroblend scale preventer" and is supposed to prevent the heating element from getting fouled with scale from hard water.

OK, so I call the local factory authorized rep for the steam cleaner, he wants a call out to inspect it before ordering the replacement, estimated cost of around $1200. No freaking way.

I did manage to get the part number from him, that was necessary to "verify" we were talking about the right thing.

I did some internet searching and found one for sale for $275. Better but still silly for what it is.
Then I found a place that wholesales parts to manufacturers, they had a web site they call "the garage sale". Basically obsolete or discontinued. Lo and behold, they had what I was looking for, the entire scale preventer for $49. A quick call and it's ordered.

It's funny that it isn't my money and it's nickel and dime considering that I spend around $12 million a year, and i'm all excited about saving a couple hundred.
go figure.


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1276788109.jpg

We have a few steam cleaners. What's the link to their site? Thanks!

Yea, I know the feeling.

We have four little electric motors with a dinky transmission on our scanner. The company that made the scanner is in Austria, and has been bought by Microsoft. To buy a replacement from them is over a grand EACH. We dug around on the internet and found the same motors & transmissions are made in Sweden. We ordered 4 of them for “only” 400 bucks. We have to solder some tiny little wires but they work great. Microsoft has just one employee world-wide to work on the scanner. He is in the US in January & February. If we call and ask for service they schedule us for January 2011! We do our own maintenance on it.

Here's the link to their garage sale page, it covers all kind of industrial stuff although they're mostly geared towards foodservice:
http://gpi-web.generalparts.com/report/garagesale.aspx
Here's their homepage:
General Parts LLC repair and spare parts – General Parts LLC Services

I regularly tell my customers how they can accomplish their goals with lower-cost products from my company than they usually buy. It cuts into my immediate revenue, but usually ends up growing the account in the long run and sure makes the customer view me as more than a vendor.

Yup, vendors that treat my money like it's theirs always get called first. They may lose a couple of bucks from time to time but they more than make up for it cause they get all my business.

Good job, Sammy. $1150 saved isn't chump change.

Phase II is to collect the $1,200 from the numbskull.

How much of your time did you spend on it? How much is your time worth?

Not discouraging - just wondering...

Probably as much time as it took him to post that during work hours.

Working swing shift, I'm at home. Nice try tho.
Also I set my own hours and usually work when I want and how long I want, no one tracks it or cares as long as I get results they want.
The past two weeks are different but usually I work 3 or 4 days a week and take at least 8 weeks off during the year.
It took 30 years to get to that point but it has strings attached.


The actual time it took to find that part and order it was prolly less than 20 minutes and two phone calls.

I wish I knew who the numbskull is, but unfortunately no one is fessing up.

Nice going Sammy...reminds me of the early days of PCA, when PANO was full of tips about which VW part was an exact replacement for a P car part costing five times as much...

Order qty 1,000 of them - at a cost of $49k
- at a replacement value of $1200 x 1000 = $1.2M value
Then you can report on your 2Q10 A&D that you saved the company $1.15M

I was just laughing at Mike's post... good job though. I am all about saving money too. Everybody around me calls me a cheap bastard.