Do you avoid the discount autopart retail stores?

Wondering if other forum members avoid the discount autopart retail stores like AutoZone and Advance Auto Parts?

I have begun to avoid them like the plague. My experience is every day they drop caring name brand parts and replace them exclusively with their Chinese nock off brand, packed in a fancy package. My last experience was I need a tranny filter for a S10. I bought a AC/DELCO from RockAuto, but could not find it. Went to Advance, all they carried was a Chinese made one. I already dropped the tranny pan, so I bought the Chinese filter. I went down the road to AutoZone. Like Advance, only carry their in house Chinese brand. I bought it also. Went to the shop and compared the old filter to the AutoZone and Advance filter. The difference was big. The lack of quality of the Chinese tranny filters was big. I would be shocked if either held up, but one would never know as it is sealed once installed.

I am not going to be a dumb consumer. I will order quality parts on line at every opportunity. I will not support AutoZOne or Advance strategy of delivering poor quality product to the consumer. Some accountant and CEO at AutoZone and Advance and pissing in their pants laughing knowing they are able to pass of this Chinese crap private label stuff, while the good parts like DELPHI are not even being offered… even at a higher price. This is not every part at AutoZone of Advance, but I see a consistent trend of quality part offering being exclusively replaced by private label Chinese crap.

Nope. I go to them faithfully. Never had any problems.

Cheap prices, lifetime warranties. What'* not to love?

It helps I know the guys behind the counter at O'Reilly though. Get my **** discounted from the already cheap price, and get the good stuff. Always.

I generally go to autozone, but I buy the part I want. If they don't have it I go else where. Walmart only carries Frame oil filters, so I wont buy from there. Some times you need to shop around.

I love buying Wal-Mart brand oil. I hope they do a big compare on oils again soon, see if their brand is still kicking ***.

Back in 05 Wal-Mart brand oil WHOOPED all the name brands.

Lifetime warranty is a gray area. Craftsman offers a lifetime warranty on its hand tools, but took the position a decade ago that it is more profitable to build a cheaper tool and hope you don't use it, rather than keep the high quality that Craftsman tools were known for.

Returning a part is not a desire of mine. I want to put in solid quality from day one, and not have to worry about it, worry about the reicept, doing the job a second time, etc. I don't care about a lifetime warranty on things like a water pump. If it fails while I am out of town, the cost of the cheap lifetime part is huge.....

On things like filters, if the tranny prematurely fails because of a cheap filter...... there is no recourse. Ford actually started selling fuel filters for its deisel engines at cost, as it was having so many fuel related failures traced to cheap filters. I am concerened this may be happening across the board, and want to be proactive in using verifiyable quality parts in my vehicle, not just a fancy box with Chinese parts in the box that have not been tested to any independent standard.

Depends on what I am getting. After getting a discount outlet tie rod for my pickup and having it snap a couple weeks later on a 4 lane doing 45, I started going to NAPA for critical parts and never looked back. Things like batterys/wipers/etc I do AutoZone/Wally.

I have a misfire on my coil pack due to the wire being shot...or spark plug wire...looking to replace both/either or...you do you guys recommend for the short term as I'm planning on doing a tune-up in 2 weeks? I'm looking to purchase from Advance...and I was looking @ the knock-offs but after reading this thread not sure. (01 SSEI)

NAPA carries BELDEN wire sets and some people think they are a solid selection. Below is the part # at NAPA:

Part Number: BEL 700323
Product Line: Belden, About $29.

If you want AutoZOne, the Bosch is an option:
Part Number: 09457 About $29

I am unable to pull the wire options up at Advance, network issue?

BTW- the man behind AutoZone is the same man behind Sears. Eddie Lampert. Lampert is a big Wall Street hedge fund guy, not a retail, or automotive guy. He is all about making huge amounts of cash (which is a good thing). He formally worked for Goldman Sachs. And, he was kidnapped in 2003, from the parking lot of his Greenwich office, but was able to convince his captors to let him go after two days of captivity. If you ever watch the movie Wall Street, he fits the mold to a T.