I bought a 'lifetime' warrantied alternator from advance auto parts, stupid I know, but I had to , the dealer wanted 200+ for it. This was on may 31, and now tonight, july 31, the alternator is making noise. I removed it from the car, it makes kind of a slight grinding noise every time it spins around. The store says well that is bearing failure, and the alternator still puts out the correct voltage, and they do not accept returns for bearing failure, which is absolute bull, they say that a bad installation causes this.... with automatically controlled belt tension, how could this be, tensioner is fine, belt is recent, and the alternator is so easy to change out. I know I should not have bought the alternator, but now that I have, how can I get them to honor the warranty, without 'fixing' the alternator so it fails internally?

thanks
matt

Hmm, well you could do what I do. YELL. I yell and they quickly change their minds when they get embarrased in front of people when you scream about their crappy A$$ warranties.

This should be moved to General Chat.

Anyone who disputes a legitimate return on a "lifetime" warranty will face my justified wrath until they surrender completely. Lol.

But seriously, they need to honor their word. Go back when they are busiest, Saturdays are usually good, and try again. You don't have to yell, but use a voice that can be heard when discussing their failure to honor a lifetime warranty.

There'* no excuse for that crap, IMO.

How did you pay? Did you use a credit card. Suggest that you may challenge the credit card billing-you have 60 days from the first time it'* billed to you to protest the charge. It costs them to protest the charge even if they win.

Try a different Advance store.

Do you have a TV station that likes to do customer help stories--if you don't mind being on camera this sounds like it would be perfect for them to go back to the store with you cameras running.

I got it taken care of today, I went to a different Advance store, where it was replaced. I'm giving it another try, if it fails again I'll demand a refund. Its now 8/1 so credit card disupte is out of the question anyway. Even before it was replaced today, they pointed to the "Remanufactured for AC delco" sticker as being proof that I was trying to return an AC alternator and not their Reman. Stupid people... but a minimum amount of attention-getting yelling did the trick.


thanks

matt

Glad you got it done. Advance needs to watch it, IMO. Word gets out when it'* a company policy to avoid honoring warranties...

I worked as a store manager with Advance for a number of years, and it is basically at the managers discretion whether or not to do the warranty swap. They will not fight a customer on something like this. If the manager turns out to be a jerk, go to his boss, the DM. The DM will not want to deal with it and will carve the store manager a new one for letting it go that far.
Advance is actually not a bad store to deal with. Never was sold on their Alternators tho. The Delco remans, on the other hand, seemed to work very well.