Century Batteries

[Franco Cozzo]

Originally Posted by arm79

I doubt any retailer has that kind of clout. Maybe on the odd occasion, but not all the time. But it seems the failures aren't of the odd occasion where the manufacturer would wear the cost.

Say Autobarn swaps the battery or gives the customer a refund then sends off the "dud" one for inspection and the manufacturer goes "no fault found" then Autobarn has to suck up the loss. Do that a few times and Autobarn are no longer on the customers side, they will strictly follow manufacturers policy.

And there is no way known the manufacturer will replace/refund every battery Autobarn demands they do. They will just stop dealing with Autobarn.

Its interesting going back and reading some of the TSB's for the B-series. In one of them it specifically says:



It goes on to say here are new testing procedures that must be followed and if the rack is changed and found to be no fault found on return or proper procedure has not been followed the entire claim will be denied and rejected.

When retailers start loosing money they quickly stand up and listen.

They do have that kind of power - Autobarn is part of BAPCOR, which has a $1.8B revenue.

Both BAPCOR and GPC Asia Pacific set the terms to their suppliers, not the other way around, because of the money they spend with suppliers.

Its the same with OEMs, you sell to them on their terms, not yours.

BAPCOR/GPC Asia Pacific and Super Retail Group would be Century's three largest customers by a huge margin and all three have the ability to set the terms to Century over contracted prices, refusing price increases and terms of sale in regards to warranty.

Just to put Autobarn and their other retail brands into perspective (Autobarn/Autopro/Sprint/Midas/ABS), retail is only 20% of BAPCORs revenue,

If Century lost BAPCOR's retail division, they'd lose 338 stores buying stock of Century product.