Pick-N-Pull is a butt rape.

You can see that I don't post much here (don't even have an A-body at the moment), but I happened across this post, and wanted to add my observations.

I haven't been to a yard in about 4 years. There was a yard near where I used to live in Maine, before I moved to NY, and I used to stop by pretty regularly. It was a family yard, been around forever, was well-managed, they turned over their stock and kept the yard reasonably clean. They guy liked me because I'd go in and buy weird stuff off his old wrecks. Prior to that, I've been to plenty of yards, since I was a little kid in the sixties. My grandfather was good friends with the owner of a local yard back in the day, and that guy's son lived down out block when I was a kid, and his grandson and my brother were friends. When I was in college, I spent an enjoyable summer working at a junkyard that replaced that guy's yard (only set two cars on fire!). So, I'm not new to junkyards, I know how they work, and I've seen a few.

I've never heard of the charges that you guys are talking about.

I've occasionally paid sales tax at a yard, if I didn't have cash and had to use a card, or if I wanted a receipt for the tax deduction or for a guarantee, but nobody has even suggested a "core charge," or an "environmental charge," or an "inventory charge," or any other BS charges.

Any yard I've ever been to where you pull the parts yourself, I've always walked into the office, dropped my tools in the corner, asked if they've got any "year/make/model" back there with a good "x" on it, then if they said, "Yup. There's four out that way a ways," I'd ask about what they think they'd want for that "x," and they'd tell me, "About 15-20 bucks, depending on how it looks," and I'd go back and pull it off.

If I'd ever gone in, asked about availability and price, marched out through the mud and the bugs, lay down in a puddle, pulled the part off, then dragged it back and they told me a different price than the one they started with, I'd have explained to them exactly where and how far to shove it and never come back.

I'm with the posters here who say you tell someone a price and you stick to that price. If you need to add in enough for increased overhead, then you quote a higher price. You don't add on extra charges later, at least not if you want your customers to come back.

- Eric