E30 Zone

Ordered a new thermostat the other day and the bloke at euro car parts insisted that it didn't need a gasket, just the o ring supplied.
So I whipped off the housing today and guess what, yes it needs a gasket and i need the car to do and get some carbon fibre doors on saturday!
Fingers crossed I can find a gasket in time

Euro Car Parts are one of the most inept and unprofessional outfits I've ever had the misfortune to use.
I ordered some parts from ECP a couple of weeks ago and they turned up broken. It proved impossible to contact anyone from Customer Services via either email or 'phone. Five days in a row I tried both methods at least twice a day.
The agitated and preoccupied sales staff put me through to a voicemail number and the emails only prompted an automated response promising someone would contact me shortly. They couldn't be bothered or care less.

Eventually I gave up, wrote the cost off to experience and ordered the same parts from GSF. They arrived in perfect condition within 24 hours.

ECP were just as piss poor several years ago and I vowed never to use them again back then. Some things never change.

I find ECP are fine if:

a) You go for the more expensive (i.e OE) parts

b) You get the bits well in advance.

They dont know the diffrence between 318i and 318is suspension as I found out after buying new shocks from them. They also sold me a prop shaft guibo that didnt fit.

Niiick wrote: They couldn't be bothered or care less.

This sounds familiar
Anything to get you off the phone and on your merry way with the idiots at the branch I (used to) use

The amount of times wrong parts have been delivered is ridiculous, they give you a price over the phone and then when the part arrives the invoice is demanding more

They thrive on you being in a rush knowing you will just pay the extra or make do.
Have you ever tried to get your money back?!

Bunch of ers

you just got to pray they give you the right part to start with.

i wouldnt waste your time with them, substandard parts and substandard service.

if you cant get the gasket try and get hold of some gasket paper and cut out your own (think theyre paper anyway) its not too difficult to do.

I assume you took the entire thermostat housing off the head ?, if you have you need a new gasket for the housing to head joint.

When changing the thermostat you only need to remove the 3 bolts on the side of the housing to remove the outlet union, there isn't a gasket here, just the o-ring.

See here http://www.realoem.com/bmw/showparts.do ... g=11&fg=35

In this instance (for a change) the man at ECP was correct, no gasket needed to change the thermostat.

Cheers,

Iain T

I gave up with ecp when they said I can't pay with my debit card for some air cooled bit's. So I went home phoned them and said can I mail order. "yes can I have your card number" was what I got. ???

GSF and main dealer all the way now...

Any new parts i need are sourced from the stealers.

My local rep seems to know what he's talking about, and they can also get RealOEM up and make sure you're getting the right things. Makes it easier when you've been given part numbers that you can see and make sure it is what you need.

I've only ever had "issues" with ECP. Either the wrong part or poor quality. AND I would NEVR use their mail order again. Trying to get any customer service after their f*ck up's is impossible. A totally inept bunch of fools.

Unfortunately GSF seem to be going the same way of late. I've always accepted them as a slightly cheaper option but have had a few issues as well.

As Andy states, if you go for their more expensive gear, you normally get exactly the same make of part as on the car but without the BMW marking. However, I've also found that a) you order that part and then find they've substituted it for the cheaper version or b) it's not that much cheaper than the dealers.

When (at a push) I can walk to Vines BMW, I see no reason to drive a 30 mile round trip to ECP.

Hey Templ8e30 cheers for the realOEM link that is the dogs nuts having that myself

Having worked at ECP HQ for a year and a half (fortunately I have left recently!) I can vouch for some of the dodgy practices that go on.

You have to be really careful with the part quality. THey may say OE quality but that mean fook all - for instance the "OE" quality Rad for my iS is some dodge from India - What makes it OE Quality? - The manufacturer sells to Tata!!! WTF...totally misleading. I believe the OE is Behr / Hella.

On the other hand some bits are fine, THey stock loads of Bilsteins, Apex Springs, Lemforder / ZF (real OEM for alot of E30), Bosch, Beru, Hella etc etc They also carry genuine on alot of BMW parts.

I NEVER bought any of the cheap shit. They have a lot of "own brand" (read "cheap chinese")stuff - except the quality is so unpredictable they wouldn't dare put their own name against it (unlike someone like Unipart for example)- insted they make up some German sounding name!

As far as sales goes - the salesmen are paid on bonus - thay don't care about some punter making a £10 sale- they care about the garage down the road who puts 2 grand a month through them - probably all of the cheapest bits too. They keep customers on the basis of price, not customer services.

In saying all this, they must be doing something right tho, cos the MD is on the fookin Times Rich List...

rab-doo wrote:Having worked at ECP HQ for a year and a half (fortunately I have left recently!) I can vouch for some of the dodgy practices that go on.

You have to be really careful with the part quality. THey may say OE quality but that mean fook all - for instance the "OE" quality Rad for my iS is some dodge from India - What makes it OE Quality? - The manufacturer sells to Tata!!! WTF...totally misleading. I believe the OE is Behr / Hella.

On the other hand some bits are fine, THey stock loads of Bilsteins, Apex Springs, Lemforder / ZF (real OEM for alot of E30), Bosch, Beru, Hella etc etc They also carry genuine on alot of BMW parts.

I NEVER bought any of the cheap shit. They have a lot of "own brand" (read "cheap chinese")stuff - except the quality is so unpredictable they wouldn't dare put their own name against it (unlike someone like Unipart for example)- insted they make up some German sounding name!

As far as sales goes - the salesmen are paid on bonus - thay don't care about some punter making a £10 sale- they care about the garage down the road who puts 2 grand a month through them - probably all of the cheapest bits too. They keep customers on the basis of price, not customer services.

In saying all this, they must be doing something right tho, cos the MD is on the fookin Times Rich List...

Well theres the proof. Thanks for being so open about it and I'm not surprised so many of us have been disappointed!

Tbh my local ECP is closer than my local dealer, and they have been fine.. Even given me discount for no reason before

Dont get me wrong tho.. I only use them for fluids or similar.. Parts i go to BMW..

To be fair - how many of you know about a Renault 19. Do you know what shocks it has? Or do you just look in a book, find the part number and say 'that's the one'.

You need to be clever and a bit pro-active. The ECP website is pretty good - look at it, work out the part numbers of the bits you need and it's not a problem.

Well theres the proof. Thanks for being so open about it and I'm not surprised so many of us have been disappointed!

Like I said - It's not all bad - You can get some decent bits - but you need to know your shit when it comes to spares cos it's too easy to get hoodwinked. Before I left I bought a seriously long list of parts for very little money, but I knew what I was getting - all Lemforder, Sachs, ZF, Bosch etc. If you rely on the salesman to guide your decision he, being human, will give you the part he makes most money on. Usually the cheap nonsense!

Their premium brand filters are good too (Hengst).

I was also able to buy in Genuine bits I needed too, getting a decent discount (tho not much different to what zimmerbimmer offers the zone- good on him!)

I should correct myself on the "cheap chinese" comment tho - so manyBMW Original parts are now sourced in China and the "emerging economies" that the country of origin is no longer a good enough reason to turn your nose up. It's really down to the companies quality procedures and checking.

The ECP website is pretty good

It hasn't been updated in about 3 years. Not really a problem for E30s since most parts will not have had any design changes since the data was put in the website. I wouldn't use it for any later vehicles tho.

It's also only a small selection of the parts on offer.

my local ECP is staffed by gents mainly from the older generation so luckily for me have tended to know their stuff regarding my e30 .and when i needed a new alternator the part listed for my engine was not the part fitted on my engine but they took the time to sift through pictures and data until they found the one that matched mine.took them 3 attempts but they found it in the end . most places would have said "thats the part listed mate" and not even bothered looking.
it purely depends on who staffs your local shop.

dhfs wrote:They dont know the diffrence between 318i and 318is suspension as I found out after buying new shocks from them. They also sold me a prop shaft guibo that didnt fit.

That's because ECP 'don't stock' the 318iS front dampers. But look at Real OEM, do some homework and you'll find out that 325i M Technic shocks are the same part number (31321135892).
ECP of course list these and for a lot less money than BMW charge for the same thing. Do your homework and ECP/GSF are a lot cheaper than BMW.

Andyboy wrote:To be fair - how many of you know about a Renault 19. Do you know what shocks it has? Or do you just look in a book, find the part number and say 'that's the one'.

You need to be clever and a bit pro-active. The ECP website is pretty good - look at it, work out the part numbers of the bits you need and it's not a problem.

I beg to differ Andy. These guys are supposed to be the pro's not us!! I expect them to be a bit clever and tell me that a 318iS front insert is the same as a 325i, not seel me the wrorg part. If it is the same then their website should tell you so.....as per a parts catalogue would.

In the same veign, how many people would look on the said website and think "oh they don't do front inserts for an iS. Better try elsewhere." They've just lost business. It's all so damn unprofessional.

Had the same issues with them, sometimes they're half alright but the last time i tried ordering from them over a new throttle position sensor only this Wednesday gone, they took over 2 minutes to answer the phone... said they'd order the parts and never did that evening.

When i called them back the next morning after they didn't call back, it turns out that they'd called another branch who 'lost' the part and they'd have to call purchusing to get it, which would have been another 3-4 working days

Surfice it to say I told them I'd look elsewhere after repeated calls and waiting on the phone for ages at a time, and thankfully Zimmerbimmer saved the day by getting the parts ordered and shipped same day which should arrive tomorrow

Either GSF or BMW though ZimmerBimmer from now on

ECP's website with regard to brake discs is as easily inadequate and mis informed as thier phone staff.

B7 wrote:

Andyboy wrote:To be fair - how many of you know about a Renault 19. Do you know what shocks it has? Or do you just look in a book, find the part number and say 'that's the one'.

You need to be clever and a bit pro-active. The ECP website is pretty good - look at it, work out the part numbers of the bits you need and it's not a problem.

I beg to differ Andy. These guys are supposed to be the pro's not us!! I expect them to be a bit clever and tell me that a 318iS front insert is the same as a 325i, not seel me the wrorg part. If it is the same then their website should tell you so.....as per a parts catalogue would.

In the same veign, how many people would look on the said website and think "oh they don't do front inserts for an iS. Better try elsewhere." They've just lost business. It's all so damn unprofessional.

To be fair to the guys at ECP, They have probably had enough of Joe public knowing all.

I have worked in the car accessory trade for 8 years and have pretty much given up on trying to think for the customer.

I tried to help a guy who was after some "acid etch" to clean his wheels with, I tried to tell him that it was too harsh to clean with and he said "Are you a trained valeter, Well what do you know then"

I will do my best to help people, but it gets to the stage when you think what's the point. The customer won't give two shits and if the part does happen to be wrong you have the whole "well why didn't you get me the part in the book"

I agree with Andy, We are all pretty clever people and a research on the part you want will help the supplier to sort your order more efficiently.

(I still only buy from the dealer or order my own parts tho, Never been in ECP or GSF )

i would always use gsf over ecp
for one it not worth me driving an extra 10 - 15 miles to save not much money if any

and 2 all i've ever heard about them are cock ups upon cock ups

d6dph wrote:
I tried to help a guy who was after some "acid etch" to clean his wheels with, I tried to tell him that it was too harsh to clean with and he said "Are you a trained valeter, Well what do you know then"

It probably dont help that most of the people working in these types of places now days dont no f@*ck all about what they sell i cant think of one place local to me that can be trusted for instance Halfrauds where you find most of the public that dont know much about cars will trust to guide them in the right direction on a few occasions i have been stuck and needed something on the quick and when asked the simplest of questions havent had a clue like when i asked if they had some oil for an lsd the guy had never heard of one so i picked up the oil which stated on it NOT suitable for lsd and asked if he had something that was suitable he still didnt have a clue and if thats a supposed to be `1 of the best dont flood ya with confidence does it.

I live a 2 minutes walk from my local ECP, and tbh if i need anything for either on my BM's i will always pop in there, never had any problems with wrong parts etc. and anything they don't have in stock they will either get in later that day or the next morning, so maybe i have just been lucky

EssexBoy, if it was the simplest of questions, why didn't you know the answer?

All of these places have online catalogues, including BMW. If you do the hard graft and get the part numbers of what you want, they will get the right bit the first time. If not, its your fault. The benefit of doing it this way is that they will give you discount straight away as 1) you are saving them loads of time searching part numbers and 2) They will probably think you are trade.

I'm not sticking up for ECP by the way, the useless bastards gave me the wrong side of a handed track control arm(Audi, and with the car 30 miles away I couldn't remember what the difference was) once. After this I always get the part number and 'feed' it to them.

Any cock up, is my cock up then.

Jon, You haven't met essexboy have you, He is a little simple himself

A friend of mine works in a garage and they get most their parts from Euro rather than GSF solely on the reason of price.

When we ordered a thermostat and housing for my M40, it came with 3 gaskets of which we only needed 1!

Had problems with them as well though, got sent an e36 rad (after giving the reg of the e30), and also for a friends cab we ordered new shocks, shortened, and they turned up as standard shocks which could have caused an MOT fail due to the lowered springs not seating properly.

They get pretty good service in terms of refunds and sending stuff back, but as previously mentioned this is probably because they are a garage buying a couple of grands worth of parts a month....

Never ordered from them direct so have no experience of what the service is like for a normal retail customer...

Sounds pretty poor from the stories on this thread though!

i recently had to change the exhaust manifold gaskets on a mk2 golf. euro car parts wanted £6 each (theres 4) gsf wanted £1 each.

only reason i ever go to ecp is because theres a branch a couple of miles fro mthe girlfriends. my nearest gsf is about 15 miles from my house but is about a million times better.

to be fair though, i've had to use ecp a couple of times in an emergency and theyve had the parts i need in stock at the branch (porsche 928 front brake pads and a mk2 golf gti radiator)

other times theyve ordered parts which havent arrived and not been able to get them despite showing on the system other times parts have been totally wrong.

the only problem with gsf is that they thought my car was a 6pot and took some convincing when i tried to tell them otherwise. i think that because it was imported in 1997 it shows up as a 1997 car on their parts finder thingy and takes a couple of extra clicks to sort out

Andyboy wrote:

dhfs wrote:They dont know the diffrence between 318i and 318is suspension as I found out after buying new shocks from them. They also sold me a prop shaft guibo that didnt fit.

That's because ECP 'don't stock' the 318iS front dampers. But look at Real OEM, do some homework and you'll find out that 325i M Technic shocks are the same part number (31321135892).
ECP of course list these and for a lot less money than BMW charge for the same thing. Do your homework and ECP/GSF are a lot cheaper than BMW.

I knew from the online catalogue the parts were not listed but were common to both the cars you mention. Thats why I called them and explained what I needed.
If you specifically ask the salesman 'are these parts for the 318is with Mtech suspension' and he says 'yes' would you not think that the parts would fit a 318is with mtech suspension?
I ended up with Sachs Boge parts from Motorforce in South Shields who were helpful, knowledgeable and reasonably priced.

I've used the one not far from me (over near catford i think) a few times if i need something quick or really cheap.

Never had any probs with any of their bits, but i always go down there and speak to them face to face and try to make sure i know what i need and check the bits while i'm there!!!

There's 1 or 2 guys that know what they're doing and the rest are just plebs!!

When i was in a rush i even bought a full set of front discs and pads from them for something like £20ish all in!!! Though they'd be crap and warp and wear really quick, but they were surprisingly good for the money!!! No probs with them at all!!!!