A really good vendor experience

We just ordered about $500 worth of manifolds and gaskets for our cylinder head replacement project. Obviously, we shopped around for price and availability and settled on Lighthouse Marine in Riverhead, New York http://www.marineengineparts.com/

We did that for several reasons. First, this is a real, second generation business with a warehouse full of marine parts. We've been there and liked the way we were treated. Second, the guys behind the counter know what they are talking about and those same guys are the ones you get when you order parts by phone. Finally, what's not to like about an Internet marine supplier that also owns a very nice marina? It's right down the street from their store.

We ordered today using the Internet because we had all of the part numbers ready. Since Lighthouse is on Long Island, we'll get the parts tomorrow and the shipping cost was $20, pretty reasonable given that the manifold we ordered weighs about 35 lbs. alone.

I received an acknowledgement from Greg, the company's business manager, within 5 minutes. A few minutes later, Greg called me. He was concerned about the head gaskets that I had ordered. Was I sure that I wanted these Chrysler NOS head gaskets? I said that I thought I did, given the description.

We discussed the possible differences in what he had and what I needed. Since by then, I was at his website, he gave me another part number, a Fel-Pro head gasket set and I looked at it. I pointed out that the application for that Fel-Pro gasket set was for 7.4 liter Ford engine and not for my engine, a Chrysler LM-360.

There was a short silence after which he said, "Our description is wrong. This Fel-Pro gasket set is for a Chrysler LM-360." He went on to say that the Fel-Pro gaskets were the "gold standard" in gaskets and they had never had any problems with their customers using them.

The Fel-Pro gaskets cost a little more so we revised the order to cover that.

Our point here is that this is the way buying marine parts on the Internet should work, but rarely does. It would have been easier for Lighthouse to send us the wrong gaskets and then play around with us getting an RMA to send them back.

But they didn't. They examined our order, found a problem and called us to resolve it. That's what happens when your supplier knows boats and values the relationship.