How Much?

I bought one about four years ago, and it was around three quid then, which I thought was a bit much.

A fairer comparison might have been the price from a Peugeot dealer however. Non-OEM Ford parts can be very cheap.

They're not alone; I've lived on a fairly modest pension for the last seven years, and have to control what I spend fairly closely. The last year has seen many things increase in cost alarmingly, in particular supermarket bills.

Chris

If it was only a small spring why not find one somewhere else?

It is in design like a heavy clothes peg spring, the chance of finding something else suitable would be very low.

you can see it and how to change it here:

so that would be two small bags of Ford springs for the same cost as the genuine Peugeot window mechanism, which has motor, gear box, cables, slider and other odds and ends and in comparison is much more involved and must involve humans putting it together (unlike the spring) Incidentally the pattern window mech. is better in design than the original BUT: I did have to modify the motor mount area on the door a little.

Is it not the same principle as why 5 self-tapping screws for example. cost £2.99 in a DIY shed ? It's not really the cost of the item, but the handling, stocking and low turnover. Not making excuses, but everyone's overheads have escalated of late.

More that they charge what they think the market will stand. Otherwise every other thing in a shed would have the same mark up.

That'll be about 30 pence for the spring, and the rest for fetching it from the back of the stock room, and doing the paperwork, which will take a while, because it goes all the way back to the factory. It's about 15 minutes labour cost for the dealer, and you could make a case that the dealer's making a loss, even at that price. I know that when I ran a coach company stores many years ago, it wasn't worth our while to record use of such items in detail, just count 'em now and then, and re-order.

Same warranty? Same confidence that it'll last?

Main dealers always have, since I started using cars in the early '70s.

Your markup on purchase price is not linear though, some things have a =

much higher per value handling cost.

Ah so what the OP is complaining about is having to pay a small amount extra for a dedicated machined device which is relatively expensive to produce. Maybe the OP can make a spring for a Lady Godiva? I doubt it.

just a length of suitable wire twisted up as needed and heat treated. Not impossible to make at home, but not worth the effort for 6 quid. but 6 quid is about 600 times the material cost and once the machine is set up the production costs are very low for an item produced in the millions.

The window winder was a replacement for a genuine one which had lasted about a year, it failed because it was too flexible, coupled with a soggy rubber bush in the bottom of the door glass. The replacement is much stronger and has done away with the use of the soggy rubber bit (that is no longer available from Peugeot) So it does actually appear to be better than oem.

A few years ago genuine Ford parts were cheaper in may cases than pattern, but that has definitely reversed in about the last 5 years.

"not worth the effort for 6 quid" So why moan about it then?

I doubt very much that 'millions' of these are stocked as spares.

no, but millions will have been made. at least one for each of the many models of Ford that use it over the last 12 or more years worldwide.

It is an over-priced simple component that fails. Production in large quantities for a manufacturer is easy, a one-off is much more difficult. Over pricing spares leads to the premature scrapping of otherwise good vehicles, which in the long run cannot be good for the world at large.

It's always been so, for any manufactured part I've ever known ...

Build a machine from spares and it costs one helluvalot more than buying one already assembled.

You look at the processes an 'over-priced simple component' actually goes through and you might not think it quite so over-priced. Very few companies can produce such a spring at the same quality for the same price .. if you can find it cheaper it will be either wrongly sized, or out of tolerance, or wrongly heat-treated if at all, but if you _do_ find one at similar quality at lower price then yes, you can claim the original is over-priced.

I sincerely doubt you would ...

I think it's more about how much it's gone up; more than double the price it was three years ago.

This level of increase is becoming common for Ford and other parts that are not available as non-OEM.

Chris

Its a money making racket , they buy them in sell them internally to the branches who again sell them internally to the spares department each department adds 20% and away you go. over priced

I think the prices of various brands' parts has equalised a bit: VAG parts used to be pricey compared to others, but the likes of GSF/Euro have changed that: these days, the common consumable bits for most cars are not so vastly diffeent in price for the same sort of spec.