That clears up a lot, guys. Guess owning a 3.2 Carrera doesn't afford me a lot of opportunities to buy CIS and MFI parts
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All in all, I think most of you actually agreed with my comments re: Pelican. Shipping is slow, and there is (IME) about a 50/50 chance something will be wrong with the order (wrong parts/shipped late/etc). And it is hit or miss - lots of stuff will be cheaper, and other stuff will be more expensive. However, I stand by my earlier remarks - for at least 75%-80% of the stuff I bought this year (suspension/body trim/interior stuff) PP was the cheapest. Trust me, I looked. In a lot of cases, their only competition was Performance and Tweeks. The other 20%? Shocks (shox.com), H4s (Vertex), Carpet/Interior (AppBiz).
As for the recent price increases - well - I think there's more to it than Wayne trying to buy more Ferraris. $140 for turbo tie rods! I paid something like $115 or so back in April. Why the steep increase? I think this is the more likely candidate:
1 Euro = $1.37
As long as the Euro keeps rising against the dollar, we're going to get screwed on parts coming out of Europe. Prices go up when a parts place runs out of stock and has to re-order at the new, higher price. Hence $140 turbo tie rods. At Vertex they are the same price. You might find them on eBay from someone who bought stock a while ago and can make money selling them at that price, but given what I know about the margins in retail, I'd bet a lot of money PP isn't buying them at $90 and marking them up to $140.