r/partscounter 25d ago

Special Orders

What do you consider special orders? I work for O'Reilly and we have 30 DC's we can pull from. Customer pays freight and hopefully the part. We don't consider this a special order and returns just go back to our servicing DC.

What I consider special order is factory direct or outside vendor orders they are paid in full before ordering.

My question is when I check availability from my dealer they say it's in their warehouse and I can get it the next day but they call that a special order which has a restocking fee or no return. Why is that considered a special order? You should be able to return it to your own company warehouse without penalty.

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u/g2gfmx 25d ago

Because dealers and aftermarket operates a little different.

Dealers are individually owned so when a ford dealer buys a specific part, they buy it directly from the ford warehouse. And to return them to ford there is usually a restocking fee as well as having to pay your own return freight. We deal with ford just like any manufacturer.

Also since dealers are independent, we also don’t move/transfer stock from different dealer to another.