Maintaining your car isn’t cheap. The costs break into car parts and materials on the one hand, and labor in the other hand. If you’re able to fix your own car, you’re one step ahead. If you are also able to save on the costs of car parts, your savings will be double.

There are various places where you can find car parts well below the usual retail price. What are the ways?

Search For Car Parts Online

Cleary, the best source to find the cheapest auto parts is online. You may not be used to shop for car parts on the internet, but it has tremendous advantages. Most importantly, you aren’t limited anymore to the shelves of your local car parts dealer, but you can check the back room of any car part store around the world.

When I last checked, Google came up with over 9 million search results for "discount auto parts". So there’s a huge supply of car parts online.

Advantages Of Online Buying

So why does buying online have so many advantages for consumers? The market has become much more transparent through the internet, meaning also more competition between merchants and lower prices. The advantage of the internet is also that it’s in fact a searchable database. If you know exactly what car part you need – including the serial number – it’s easy for Google to find those merchants that sell this exact part, since many merchants put their entire stock online.

For merchants, the internet has advantages too, since the specific products they sell can be found much more easily by anyone. More customers mean that they can turn around their stock supply much faster, and this translates to lower prices for consumers as well.

Tips And Considerations

A tip: if you’re looking for a very specific part, always put your search phrase between quotation marks. Search engines will then only return those pages that include the search phrase exactly like you entered it.

Please note that while some merchants include shipping and handling costs into the quoted product prices on their sites, many will add them only right before you click the "Order" button. This seems like an extra cost to you, but don’t forget that it costs you both money and time to drive to a local store, as well.

To find good merchants, check their reputation on user forums etc. on the internet by googling the company name. Bad news travels fast on the internet, which is good news for you as a consumer. Also check their return policies. With car parts, you often only know if it was the right part after you’ve got it in your hand. That’s why a good merchant should have a liberal returns policy.

The main thing for you is making sure that you find the right part. Check serial numbers and car manuals to ensure this, and ask the merchant.

If you follow these rules, you should be able to save quite some money by buying discount car parts online.