OT-You thought it was bad with the chain parts stores before?......
It just got worse. We have an autozone up in town. It's a small store. I practically know all of the guys who work there. I just called up there to see if they had any water traps for my air compressor hose. Some guy with a very strange name answered. I asked him if they had any. He hesitated. Then he asked me "year, make, and model?". I kind of chuckled and explained that I was talking about a part for an air compressor. He said "oookaaayyyyy, for this I will have to transfer you to the front of the store." By then I realized I had been switched to some stupid call center somewhere. So he put me on hold. Then he came back and asked me again what I needed. So I asked him if he was indeed standing in that store. He hesitated and admitted that he wasn't. I just thanked him and hung up the phone. I'd rather get a busy signal on my local parts house phone than be transferred to call center in Guam. You wait and see, every single chain will follow their lead.
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Oh crap, i hope you are wrong, that's all we need,:mad::-X09:-X09 JIM :-wink
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Would you like Currey with that?
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To tell you the truth, the AZ near me has gotten much better over the last 2 yrs. They have a mix of older guys and young bucks, but all of them are knowledgable. Complete turnaround from earlier. I suspect it has to do with the local manager more than anything.
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Originally Posted by ALBUQ F-1
(Post 10249193)
To tell you the truth, the AZ near me has gotten much better over the last 2 yrs. They have a mix of older guys and young bucks, but all of them are knowledgable. Complete turnaround from earlier. I suspect it has to do with the local manager more than anything.
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Originally Posted by ALBUQ F-1
(Post 10249193)
To tell you the truth, the AZ near me has gotten much better over the last 2 yrs. They have a mix of older guys and young bucks, but all of them are knowledgable. Complete turnaround from earlier. I suspect it has to do with the local manager more than anything.
Bobby |
You have gotten what you deserve. Your quest for the cheapest part possible is at the expense of quality parts and personnel. The down fall of the overall automotive industry is the lack of hands on car people. Autozone is a prime example of stockholder first, bottom line second,answer telephone call before serving customer standing in front of them. Parts quality last. What good is a warranty if you have to replace the part more than once. While you are at it stop by Walmart and pickup some overpriced groceries. I do not shop at Autozone or Walmart. Good day Sir.
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Originally Posted by councilman
(Post 10249653)
You have gotten what you deserve. Your quest for the cheapest part possible is at the expense of quality parts and personnel. The down fall of the overall automotive industry is the lack of hands on car people. Autozone is a prime example of stockholder first, bottom line second,answer telephone call before serving customer standing in front of them. Parts quality last. What good is a warranty if you have to replace the part more than once. While you are at it stop by Walmart and pickup some overpriced groceries. I do not shop at Autozone or Walmart. Good day Sir.
My local AZ is a crap shoot when you call or visit in person. I have found one counter person, a very nice young lady, who has gone out of her way to help me find parts for the '37 Buick I'm working on. If you think finding parts for our old Ford trucks are hard to find try finding parts for a pre-war vehicle. I go to AZ for generic type parts that I know I can get cheaper or if it's late at night or the weekend when I want to get something done at that time and the "good" parts stores are closed, otherwise I like going to my local NAPA for better quality and what I normally would consider better service but lately the new bread of counter help at my NAPA isn't any better than the AZ. When I go into the NAPA if I don't see the few people I know that are willing to help I figure it's a lost cause. There's one guy who will sit on his fat butt and won't go out of his way to help. If it doesn't show up on the computer monitor in front of him he won't go any farther. I will avoid that loser like the plague and will wait until one of the better counter guys, in this case again, counter girl, is freed up. I know she'll dig out the old books and flip through them with me. Another segment of our mass corporate society who have gone to off site customer service is the local McDonald's. I recently saw a show about fast food and they were touting MDs new modern drive through system. I've gotten my order messed up quite a few times because of it. Usually it's in my favor. If they give me more than I ordered and I have already pulled out onto the road it's their loss. They can hear the other guy's b****ing about being shorted. Once I'm on the road I don't have time to turn around and sort the mess out unless I'm the one who got short changed.:-X04 |
I have a lot of choices but I use my local car quest store. Mostly manned by knowledgable guys and one girl who is getting better all the time and is killer with paints. What I like about this store is that it a "working" store. By that I mean people who do this for a living buy their parts here.
Been going there so long I know everybody and that is good. The girl came from autozone but she actually knows her stuff and can think. I was scrounging for some small generic part I needed and i approached the counter at AZ and the first question is year make and model of car? Once I told him it fit many cars and he couldn't use his computer I thought he was going to cry. He looked so lost.....:-X15 Luckily his manager was standing near by and stepped in. jim:-tap |
Oookaaaayyyy. I think Bob's first paragraph pretty much takes care of that. I didn't realize I singlehandedly destroyed the American dream. And by the way, take a guess which parts house is still open after I get off work--it's certainly not the ma and pa place that I've used regularly for the last 25 years. I just needed a water separator for my compressor line. By the way, if my child needs some diapers right now, take a guess the only store in town that's still open. Walmart here I come. No point in being rude. We had that here frequently when I first joined. Now it's laid back for everybody to learn and enjoy. Let's keep it that way.
As far as the whole Autozone thing goes. I was just simply giving you guys a heads up on how customer service could get worse. Wasn't trying to single out AZ, because I imagine it's just a matter of months until all the other chains probably do the same thing. The ma and pa old school parts store that I usually use gets a lot of business during the day. When they get swamped, they simply reach over and take the phone off the hook. Those of us who are regular customers realize that and just call back later or get in the car and drive over there when we can. Nobody takes offense to them doing it. We all know that the customers standing there should get priority. |
I will resist the temptation to bash any chain store. Honestly, my criteria for parts purchases depends on how much time I have before I need the part, where the part is located on the vehicle (i.e. how hard will it be to replace it should it fail) and how critical is that part to the overall success of the vehicle running. I often go through the process of checking out the numerous catalog stores (mid-fifty, hot rod's, NPD, etc.) but I also check AZ, Advance, NAPA and Oreillys. Lately I have bought a lot from Oreillys. Their customer service tends to stink but they have some great vendor lines (Moog for the suspension stuff for example). I do my parts research online long before I walk into any store. That way I have a clear understanding of what I need and how much it will cost me. I don't care what the sign above the store says, its the vendor lines that vary in quality. I don't rely on the "advice" of the local parts store guy. Nothing ticks me off more than getting the wrong parts and wasting a trip. Even some of the old timers forget how our trucks were built "way back when". And sadly, my local NAPA stores are a joke (ok, I bash a little). They are filled with parts counter guys that care more about leaving at 5 than helping a guy get parts for an old Ford (of course 95% of the guys are Chevy meatheads). I got tired of my local NAPA after ordering gaskets for the 4th time only to get the wrong parts. I rely on the many good people here on FTE, they tend to be the best source for info on the parts I need. Just my .02.
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ya gotta love that ? what kind, what year,etc. i have gone in the chain stores and told them exactly what i need by number, then wait for the questions. thats usually when i start having fun with them. its for my homemade plane or flame-thrower. sometimes its a big block in a yugo. we have a local house that has the old school guys and they always get the call for the old stuff. its getting harder to get pre 63 stuff now though. i just ordered 20 studs for the spacers i need for the MH's and the guy at the truck shop was great. got out all the stud books, the micro, took me in the back to try what he had on hand in a new steel wheel. ordered them without prepaying, the whole nine yards. it was a good day!
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My AZ is the last place that I'll go. It's like Disney World or Six Flags as they try to keep you in a line as long as possible. First, it's the line at the parts counter(about 15 minutes) and then you have to get in a line at the cash register. I've been the only customer in the store with 4 employees in there and you would have thought I was the invisible customer. If I get out of there in less than 20 minutes, I feel lucky. I guess they figure the longer they keep you in the store, the more you'll buy. Instead I go across the street to O'Reilley's. If it takes more than 10 minutes to get out of there, I must have done a bit of browsing.
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In my small town of 30k people all the privatly owned shops with a machine shop in back are all gone. Were now stuck with 3 chain stores. that sucks .to buy a high quality part i have to go catalog. the other day my fuel pump went out on the road, no biggie i walked to a chain store picked up a new one and made the roadside repair, but now ill probably go catalog to get a quality pump, and keep this one as a spare behind the seat or somthing. Welcome to corporate America folks. (JIMMY)
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I like Advance auto parts personally. They seem a lot more helpful than Autozone around where I live. I have even had trouble with Oreilly's at times but nothing extreme. I shop at Walmart all the time considering there are 2 of them within 10 miles of each other in my area and one is about 5 minutes from my house. Sure I can see people's points/opinions about how the chain stores are bad and all, BUT IT DOESN'T MEAN GET ON A FORUM AND BASH SOMEONE FOR TRYING TO GET A PART FROM ONE OF THEM!
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