NOS GM 86-88 Tail Light Emblems from GBP

[88hurstolds]

thepartsplaceinc.com is a vendor everyone should steer clear of.

They sell reproduced stuff all the time as NOS originals and even pass the first production runs off as NOS to get a few extra bucks.
More recently '83 H/O header emblems that were cheaply made and had the wrong contour yet being sold as NOS GM on eBay, PN and all... my buddy bought 4 of them for $125 each . Yes the price is a red flag I suppose but usually a vendor will have a stockpile of NOS parts as I figured in this situation.
Checkout their feedback on eBay if you want to see carnage...

I've heard countless horror stories about them through others as well.

 

[1bad79]

it clearly says you were buying nos parts and repops are coming soon,thats some shady chit he pulled

 

[agtw31]

just another shady parts vendor

 

[LOCOGOMEZ]

Damn that is not good business at all.... There has been numerous times that stuff like this happens to me. I just stay clear of those companies and look else where.

88hurstolds by the way I still havent been able to mount the carb on my car. Been real busy working and working on my sons car (volvo s40). It seems like if I want to work on my car something always comes up on why I can't. LOL Oh well maybe this weekend. We shall see...

 

[DoubleV]

Modern day business model; make money by any means necessary without regard to quality service, quality parts, or repeat business.

 

[69hurstolds]

Caveat emptor. Bottom line, there are people/vendors that I will never ever knowingly buy from again in my life. I will do without rather than do business with them. As a seller of parts and/or services, if you can't be honest with the people giving you money, then soon that business model runs dry. Look at Brothers Automotive's cheap tricks. I can't believe they're still finding schmucks to buy their junk, which most of it can be had from other vendors anyway. Fine if everything goes right, but YOU are the one ALWAYS at fault if something goes sideways. ALWAYS. Never once did I ever see them own up to a problem being their fault and fix it right. Not one time. I got fooled once by them, but never again. If they have money to eat, it's not going to be from my wallet.

Luckily, I have almost every NOS part I'll ever need, and then some, so repop crap like these particular taillight emblems aren't going to be an issue for me. I do wish these repops came out nicer. And if someone ever makes them correctly, then it might be worth it. That plus the front 87-88 nose emblem are some really desirable parts. Unfortunately, the economies of scale always come into play so what seems like what should be a cheap part (GM ordered zillions of parts) becomes a lot pricier when reverse engineered for a few hundred or few thousand at most. Plus the GM licensing fees on top of that. And this makes producers cut corners, and next thing you know the vendor wants you to mount taillight emblems in with double sticky tape or some other non-original method and then makes some sort of claim that you're lucky to get the part, and some sob story of why they can't do it right and that you should accept inferior repopped parts.

Actually, in reality, most of the taillight emblems I've seen from 86-88 were usually just faded or missing the inner section and the chrome section in decent shape. So if the inner section was made to simply epoxy into place of the old one, that would be 100 X better. JMO.

 

[mr evil]

Modern day business model; make money by any means necessary without regard to quality service, quality parts, or repeat business.

Unfortunately true much of the time.....but in niche markets, those vendors won't last. I'm well aware that it's almost impossible to please everyone, particularly a large scale customer base, but a continuous run of bad feedback will kill any business. It's so easy to research companies before you buy these days, any customer who doesn't is just doing themselves a disservice. Sad but true.