The Tale of Two Auto Parts Stores
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| Checking the Price Online |
A quick visual inspection showed nothing out of the ordinary on the brake, caliper or rotor.
When it didn't go away after a couple of days I finally headed over to a friend's house to pull the tire and check since my Home Owner's Association does not allow auto-maintenance on the property. By this time I was terrified the caliper was hanging off or the brake pads had ground themselves off, even though I still never heard the squeal of the low pad indicator.
Luckily, that particular morning, Google Offers came out with an offer for Advanced Auto Parts. The offer was for $10 off a purchase of $50 or more. Great, I thought! I jumped online and checked prices. Brake pads, their store brand, Wearever, came in a number of options and I chose the more expensive Platinum offering, Part No. PNAD369, at $50.99. I then checked rotor prices in case I needed to replace the rotors as well (which I wouldn't know until I had the tire off -- see above image). The rotors ranged from $21.99 to $59.00. With the $21.99/ea rotors having better reviews I decided to save my money and purchase the less expensive ones if I had to replace them.
Fast forward a couple of hours -- I'm at my friend's house and we've pulled my noisy wheel. Sure enough, the rear brake pad, without a audible indicator, was ground down and had eaten into the rotor. As far as I know, the rotor was the original on the truck making it nearly 16 years old. So, I decided to replace it. For a measly $21, why not?
My friend drives me to Advanced Auto Parts and I give the guy (Darnell) the parts numbers for the pads and rotors I was looking to purchase. He told me to hold on and then asked me for the make/model of my vehicle, year, engine size, etc. He then tabs through a bunch of windows faster than I can follow and tells me the cost will be more than $180.
Huh? What?
How in the Hell does $50 + $21 + 21 = $180+? By my math we're looking at about $90 plus tax, minus my Google Offer of $10.
So I asked Darnell how he came to that price to which he explained he chose the $60 rotor over the $21 rotor making the price higher. Sixty plus 60 plus $50 for the pads equals $170 plus taxes (a little over $180).
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| My Google Offer |
At this point I told him I wanted the part number I brought with me, not what he chose for me and he tried to give me some explanation of why I needed the more expensive ones over the less expensive. I told him I wanted the less expensive ones. He then tried another tactic stating the more expensive ones didn't need to have the bearings greased while the cheaper ones did.
My friend, more mechanically inclined than I am, told me the guy was full of shit and we left. According to my friend, he paid about $20/ea when he replaced the pads and rotors on his Yukon XL 2500.
We drove down the street to O'Reilly's Auto which I'd never been to before yesterday. O'Reilly bought out Checkers Auto and since my experiences with Checkers Auto were less than satisfactory, I stayed away from O'Reilly.
I must say, my experience with O'Reilly was great. Not only was the staff knowledgeable and friendly, but when I told the guy this was the first time I'd ever been to an O'Reilly (and why) he gave me a free hat. Nope, two free hats: one for me and the other for my friend.
And my final price was less than $80 for two sets of brake pads and two rotors. Yay!
Another hour, or so, and I have new brake pads and rotors on my truck. No grinding no minding.
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