Look, I was the biggest booster of parts.com for many years. In fact I was the person who turned on most of the Banzworld W126 crowd to parts.com back in the late 2009 time frame, including folks like McClare and others who actually didn't believe that I was telling the truth with relation to the discounts that could be obtained at the time through parts.com. See this thread for more details on what I am saying:
http://www.benzworld.org/forums/w126-s-se-sec-sel-sd/1550134-whats-deal-parts-com.html
Many of us have already looked at the new MB Naperville web site. Unfortunately they are now only offering a 20% discount off of MB list price (in some instances, 10%) and this is not as good as other sites, such as MB Asheville.
Naperville (through parts.com) has raised its prices several times in the past 2-3 years. It used to be they were offering prices at 35% and sometimes up to 40% off of MB list prices, and this slid down to MB list minus 25% in recent months. Now with the new site, they had another price hike to MB list minus 20% for most items.
It has been proven that several sites are offering better prices, and thus the following options exist and are better than MB Naperville:
1) Using MB Asheville, which uses the "old" familiar Trademotion parts search engine that parts.com used to use. Know that Trademotion is an online parts catalog supplier/engine first, and they happen to have their own subsidiary that uses their own catalog called parts.com. That division, parts.com, was the one that contracted with MB Naperville in the past as their MB dealer for fulfilling parts orders that came in through the parts.com ordering front-end. They have agreements with many other dealers around the US for other marques. Naperville pulled away from parts.com because of the issues and created their own ordering web site using another vendor's catalog system (not TradeMotion). But many other dealers such as MB Asheville continue to use the Trademotion parts engine, and are offering much better pricing than MB Naperville's "new" site is offering. Also ... Trademotion recently introduced a new front-end to its parts engine, which some dealers (and parts.com subsidiary) are using. Unfortunately it is a flawed and botched setup that doesn't allow folks to do proper parts searches. Luckily Trademotion still makes their "old" parts engine available and this is what sites like MB Asheville are still using. Hopefully that won't change soon, because the "new" Trademotion parts engine REALLY sucks. You can see it for yourself at parts.com if you check out their MB parts ordering system there.
2) Use Lionel, as set up by our own star here, Clark Vader. Lionel offers free shipping and excellent parts prices. He is an MB dealership parts guy in Florida. His setup is well documented here, and many folks here have ordered through Lionel and have been completely satisfied.
3) Use Tom Hanson of the MB Classic Center. Tom is now my "go to" guy for MB parts. He will beat any price quoted (say, from MB Asheville which is already among the best discounts you can get) and he offers plenty of value-added expertise because he is an MB employee, and has around 40 years in the MB parts business working for MB dealers and MB itself. He offers great service, low shipping costs, and for members of this site he will go the extra mile and will meet or beat any legit quoted price. Tom REALLY wants our business and hustles hard to earn it. Plus he's a fantastic guy, to boot !!
Unfortunately, the salad days of parts.com and MB Naperville have passed. The MB parts torch has passed and we have other options these days that are better.
Cheers,
Gerry
