Why does Parts Deapartment need my VIN?

By John Lobdell, Parts Department
In today’s world every thing is VIN (vehicle identification number) specific. Without this seventeen-digit number, we essentially do a lot of guessing on how your vehicle is built and with what options. The very first question we usually ask is, “do you have your VIN?” This is because it saves us all a lot of time if we can enter the VIN and have the computer use the VIN information to decode the year/make/model of your car or truck. Knowing your VIN is vital to keeping our questions as short as possible. It is still possible to look parts up for your vehicle with-out your VIN number but it takes much longer, as we have to the year, make, and model, trim level, and package of your vehicle. By asking these types of question we get to narrow down the many different choices of replacement parts available depending on what you are looking for. All these extra questions make the process take longer for you, and it can even lead to mistakes that would not have been made by using the VIN.
When I originally started in this business, we had two different ways of looking up parts for a car our truck. The first method was the old tried-and-true book or catalog. The other method was called a microfiche, which was the cutting edge technology for those times. It was always a good idea to have both methods to work from because if the bulb burned out on the microfiche then we were out of business until we got a new bulb. I personally preferred the books more. Because we did not have online catalog systems, we had to look everything up individually. Today, the computer uses the VIN to break your vehicle down to the specifics of how it was built, which saves us all a lot of time. This computer-based VIN decoding technology allows the Parts Department to serve you faster and more accurately. Even though we can still break the VIN number down manually it is so much faster and easier to allow a machine to do it. So the next time you’re looking for parts, don’t be surprised when we ask for your VIN.

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