It has been my experience
buying replacement parts (Volvo Penta) in Canada is an exercise in frustration (long lead times) and expense (huge markups).
I don't know about Yanmar parts supply in Canada but VP appears to have only 1 avenue for the parts to flow into Canada via a VP distributor in
British Columbia. So I've been told, but is probably BS, all the VP parts come from a VP warehouse on the easthern US seaboard (I forget the city) to BC before making their way across Canada.
The biggest problem with replacement parts in Canada would be the size of the market. It's tiny compared to the US. I read the figures a couple of weeks ago and the US has something like 30M recreational boats and Canada has something like a million give or take a few. Distributors and retailers don't have enough critical mass of consumers to stock large (and comprehensive) supplies of replacement parts, which leads to my first point of long lead times and special order parts.
Even though our currencies are on or near par the parts have to flow through so many hands before they get to the consumer they've at least doubled in price and don't forget the Gov't gets their fingers into that basket along the way. It wasn't that long ago that retailers in Canada were paying a 30-40% premium on the US dollar and are still holding stock that was bought back then. If they can't write down those
money costs they'll either continue to charge large markups on parts or sell at a loss to liquidate their older stocks of parts and accessories.
For example, a thermostat housing for my VP gas
engine in the US is $140 and from a Cdn retailer, are you sitting down? $500+taxes. *shudder* We're lucky we live near a border crossing to NY state. We can skip across the bridge and pick up parts at the local UPS store. We're there practically every weekend along with hundreds of other Cdn's doing the same.
So, I wouldn't blame the parts retailer or mechanic. They're on the shitty end of the supply chain when it comes to supplying their clients with reasonably priced replacement parts. The sharks up the
food chain, including the Gov't, shippers, brokers, wholesalers, have all gotten their cut and don't forget the retailer who's got to hold the stock, manage the stock, market the stock and
service the
sale and answer after
sale concerns of the customer. IMHO the retailer and mechanic are really getting the short shaft on replacement parts in Canada.
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