spadoctor wrote:
...One last point....the dealer is the last QC of the product and as such is paid a PDI fee....however many dealers don't bother to check a unit....fill the propane wash it and out the door. He is the equivalent of the punchlist guy a builder sends in to fix the screw-ups made while building your house. Can a better unit be built...for sure....but the public want fancy and cheap.
Really that's part of the problem. This would be a great idea if dealerships were corporately owned. At least that way they would have some skin in the game so to speak. In the real world dealer's primary concern is to sell units. Most don't care if it's a quality product or not. They have no loyalty to any brand as evident of what you see on their lots. If one of the brands they're selling isn't moving well, they'll just jump ship and pick up a different brand. When things go wrong they then blame the manufacturer for the flaws so that it's not a reflection on them. They then turn around and get paid to fix the problem.
Not all manufacturers pay a PDI fee to the dealer. When there is a fee it's not normally held in exchange for a document proving that they actually did the PDI. It's just an honor system which works in the favor of the dealer. Some dealers just see the fee as money to pay for the propane, battery, and a starter kit which is what they call a PDI.
Having better quality control in house would be in the company's best interest. It's much less costly to fix an item at the factory than it would be to ship assemblies halfway around the county to a dealer and then pay the dealer to fix it. In most cases the customer is without the unit while this process is going on. Inspectors should exist at every step in the factory and the punch lists generated should be completed before the units leaves. There are incidentals that happen during transport and that's when the dealer should have to step in. But when necessary components are completely absent, that's a quality control issue that should have been caught at the factory.
It's always said, "If you want a better unit then you need to pay more." This is true to a certain extent. I can understand when you're talking about the longevity of the unit, it's material, or even the quality of materials. However, it doesn't cost any more to build a unit, with cheap materials, the correct way. It doesn't cost the manufacturer any more to add a necessary stop to a drawer, place screws in the correct place on a roof, actually put caulking across seams, or properly connect air ducts.
If in house workers aren't capable of correctly building cabinets, gluing pipes, building frames, or running wires then the manufacturer should outsource the jobs. This is one of ways the auto industry is able to pump out tons of cars with very few assembly issues. Almost everything is outsourced, built as an assembly unit, tested, then brought to the factory for final assembly. When the automotive industry switched to this system, we didn't see a dramatic increase in car prices, but quality did start to go up.
