rev up your engines, today I'm gonna talk
about autozone versus O'Reilly where should you buy auto parts, everybody
wants to save money buying auto parts but they don't want to get something
doesn't work or junk that falls apart fast, now autozone started in the 1970s
they originally called Auto Shack but they were sued by
RadioShack, well they're not even around anymore so they changed the name to
autozone, it's got a better ring to it anyway, and they currently have over
6,000 stores, now O'Reilly was founded by the O'Reilly family in 1957 and they now
have about 5200 stores in 47 states of the United States, now more so than
autozone the O'Reilly company assimilates other stores for example the
Charlie's high/lo that was started in Houston, their hundred and eighty
something stores were bought by O'Reilly and merged into the O'Reilly chain, where
a lot of autozone stores they're just stores that the company built and they
built up a big infrastructure themselves well since they're in direct competition
there are very similar infrastructures and they have very similar warranties,
for example if you buy a gold top-of-the-line Duralast better it comes
with a three-year replacement free, same thing at O'Reilly, but I do have to give
autozone the edge in batteries because they're always selling their own brand
Duralast, of course they don't make them there's only like three manufacturers of
batteries left in the United States of any size, but for my personal experience
of buying batteries I mainly buy all my customers batteries now at an autozone
because I tried Oreilly's in the past and since they were lower than everybody
else including the autozone one, I bought quite a few of them years ago but most
of them bit me in the rear end almost every single one I bought came back
within a year or year and a half and these are three year warranty batteries, now
they were good on warranties they gave me new free batteries but what an
inconvenience for the customer they get stranded somewhere with a bad battery
when they only bought one about a year year and a half before, and take both O'Reilly
and autozone they have lifetime warranties on quite a few things, but
again if the quality isn't good you're gonna be annoyed by a life
warrantee on some things, for example few years back I had a customer with a
Nissan Maxima the alternator went bad so I went to Oreilly and I bought an
alternator, now it did have the lifetime warranty but in the next six months that
car went through five of their rebuilt alternators, I had to keep swapping it out
and I'm an honest guy I swapped them out to
free for the customer I didn't charge him anything, but after the fifth one went
bad, obviously they had a batch of bad alternators wherever they were buying
from, personally I've never had that same experience with an autozone, every once
in a while I get one that doesn't work out of the box, but I never had one that
I had to replace five times and then finally give up, now both O'Reilly and
autozones have to loaning services, they check your batteries free things like
that, it's just if one does it the other is going to do it, because they're
competing against each other, and they both have rewards programs where for
every dollar you spend, you get a certain percentage credit on a little card and
it builds up and you can spend it, so there's really no difference between the
two of them there, they call it rewards program, basically they want you to keep
coming back to that store thinking, oh I'm saving money so I'll keep going to
that store and build it up, but here's what I'm gonna warn you about any
discount auto parts store just because it's a discount auto parts store, don't
assume you're gonna get the best price there of something you're buying, oil
their brands are in bottles wherever you buy it it doesn't matter, the same
brand the same bottle you're getting the same oil, so always check prices because
I've seen these discount auto parts store and for a quart of oil they might
want six dollars and forty cents, I get the same thing for three dollars in 10
cents at the Walmart down the street, I now buy a lot of stuff online I got
Amazon Prime shipping cost me nothing and I find the best prices that I can
and buy it there, and even there every time I'm getting my supply I checked
through to see who's got the best price, those things are always changing, I had
to put a starter on a 350 v8 Chevy pickup truck it was bad and back in
those days I did mobile mechanics, I went out so the
nearest place was an O'Reilly store, so I take the
starter off bring in and say give me a new starter, they gave me a rebuilt
starter I put it on it didn't work so I went back to the store and said you sold
me a bum starter so they got out the jumper cables, and hooked it up
to the starter on the table and it went whoo and it was spinning they said, oh no
look this thing works well that was the counter man, I said look it's a bad start
I said give me your manager, so the manager comes out does the same test and
says well look it works and I said I've been a mechanic for a long time now it
was only 30 years back then, not 51 but still 30 years of experience is still a
reasonable amount, use your noggin okay you hooked up a battery to the starter
sitting on a table here and it spins, so it spins in the air there's no
resistance it's just spinning in the air well after about 20 minutes of arguing
back and forth he finally gives me another starter it worked, and the
customer paid me I went away, but let me tell you that's the last time I ever
went to that particular store, and experience can differ in different areas,
I've met people that absolutely hate Auto zones because they had a bad
experience with people working there, it can cut both ways, just in my own
personal experience I had the worst ones at O'Reilly Auto Parts stores, when I was
young the auto parts stores were often manned by ex mechanics that maybe they
had their arm broken or they were couldn't do it anymore they were just
worn out, but they knew a lot about cars and cars were simpler then, and they
could give some great advice and stuff on cars, but today let's face it with the
lower wages that a lot of the people are paid you're not gonna get ex mechanics
working now I mean that just doesn't happen anymore, so basically you want a
store that's friendly and that has a liberal or return policy if you got
something didn't work you don't want it find a place that will take it back and
give you your money back, here's a story that shows you how far sometimes they
will go, I was at the Auto Zone down the street years ago and a guy was coming in
to return these car ramps where you drive your car up on the ramp to change oil
and stuff, well the manager refused to give the guy any money because he did
not have a receipt for that ramp guys other stores the other managers were
telling these guys are pulling a scam there was some big store that has having
a sale on these ramps for like 59.99 an autozone sold them for $99 so it was
obvious that some guys were going and buying them at the cheap place and then
trying to return them to Autozone without a receipt and pocket the cash
differential, well the manager was wise for that and he didn't want to give their
money back, but the customer was insistent made him call the regional
manager for autozone, and that guy said give him his money, he gave the guy
money for those ramps that probably they didn't even buy them at an autozone store,
bought them somewhere else, but the regional manager wanted to make people happy so
they do have a rather good return policy at autozone in my experience, now
one thing a lot of people wonder as well where you gonna find quality parts,
truthfully if you look at the majority of parts these days sold in the United
States they either come from China or Mexico that's just the way that the
economy has gone, you're gonna find this is true at autozone and O'Reilly it
really don't make all that much difference there's little differences
here and there, maybe once in a while one has some American supplied
thing and the other will have a Chinese supply thing, but all in all they're
pretty much selling the same type of stuff other than the price that you're
gonna pay, so of course always comparison shop, I mean a lot of them of a price
match if you say, hey look you're in an autozone O'Reilly sells the same exact
thing cheaper don't meet the price most of the time, and vice versa as long as
it's the same exact part, so really what it comes down to is how are you treated
at these stores, so now you know the truth about autozone versus O'Reilly, so you
can make a wise choice next time you're buying car parts, so if you never want to
miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring that Bell
