Consumer guidance on fake car parts

Ormy1 said:
Yes it's important that people are aware of fake parts and their dangers, but I don't like the part where they discourage car mechanics from allowing customer-supplied parts. It's the customers risk to take, if the garage is afraid of liability, then make the customer sign something confirming they supplied the part and did so at their own risk.
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Fair point, but from experience it doesn't always end well.
For example, you buy a clutch kit from Ebay along with a concentric slave cylinder and we spend (say) 6 hours fitting it.
A week later the CSC goes pop and you're stuck and need recovering in.
Obviously we won't cover the parts or labour under warranty, so you then have to try and claim from the seller, which as you can imagine will be a royal pain in the ass and take time, all whilst you're stuck with no car.
This is why we won't fit customer supplied parts.
As for fake parts, I remember back in the 90's there was some branded brake pads doing the rounds, and the friction material was actually mud, like literally mud!
 
Ormy1 said:
Whether a part is fake or bad quality versus genuine or good quality is not a binary 'either/or' situation, usually there's a continuous scale of quality and cost, and it is not a certainty that the most expensive option is the best quality nor that the cheapest is the lowest quality. Some car manufacturers put huge markups on spare parts (looking at you BMW) where the cheaper alternatives are just as good if not identical, where's the government warning about that.
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Some of the cheaper alternatives are made in the same factory as the genuine parts, but have the logo's ground off so they can sell them to motor factors, it's not uncommon to see it.
That said, there's some absolutely awful quality stuff being supplied out there.
 
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