Cars and Bikes

Stay at Jakarta (Indonesia) and having some European or American cars/motorcycles in your garage, a potential problem could be rise when we need a parts or reference for our vehicles. In my experienced buying several pre-owned cars, most of them came without any owner manual book. The basic information of your car usually available in this book. I asked the the authorized car dealer, and most of them said that they don't have any stock, and if I want to ordered, they not sure when the book will available.

Almost same problem for specific part for your vehicles, most of the authorized dealer only have fast moving parts on their stock, for the specific one, they should ordered to their head quarter and can't give the exact time when the parts are available.

So, I should find the the reference or the parts by my own way. Buying directly from the online store outside of Indonesia. The problem, Indonesian credit card credibility is very poor due to most of carding fraud comes from this country. In this case, a personal approach to the merchant is needed. With a complete data (credit card, id, vin number, telephone, e-mail etc.) the merchant usually will approve our transaction. However, for security reason you should select a reputable merchant for transaction.

I'm a Amazon customer for almost 8 years, during that time I bought a lot of books regarding car repair manual, automotive etc. I'm satisfied with Amazon services. Sometimes the was a delay in receiving package, mostly caused by poor Indonesian mail service quality. Sometimes a reference I needed was not available in Amazon, so I could find other merchant, and with personal approach they never refused my transaction. For an example, last month I bought volvo owner manual and volvo technical reference from volvo technical info shop at Sweden, its took only 5 days to get the package on my hand with a regular mail service

The same personal approach style also applied when looking for vehicles/bike parts. However in this case we should also consider the parts size, shipping option and local tax. Sometime we have no choice, we should paid all of the cost otherwise our car will sit in garage forever. For spare parts with total price above US$150, I'd never use the regular mail for delivery, a reputable freight forwarding company likes DHL, UPS or FeDex are more secure, they will protect our parts.

And for the last three year there is another option for shopping, through Ebay. Around 2004 Ebay allowed Indonesian become a member, and almost at the same time Paypal as one of the payment processor also opened for the Indonesian. So, actually I have no problem anymore for searching a spare parts for my bike/vehicles, as long as I have enough money in for my credit card, the parts always available. For instance, I bought a crappy, rusty secondhand CDI from Ebay for my old Honda cx500, its cost me around US$ 37 (including shipping cost). This bike already 5 years sitting on my garage. That crappy secondhand CDI is work!!! (at least for 2 years).