"taylor9565" <taylor9565@msn.com> wrote:
: You guy's really don't like the 'ZONE ?
: or is it just one or two stores in particular?
I get most of my stuff mail order, but for the items that I do
pick up locally, I go to Autozone. I have found the prices are
lower than Advance Auto or NAPA. However, the staff makes all the
difference in the world. Back when the store first opened, there were
a couple of guys there who were excellent. They raced at the local
strip and they knew their stuff, and knew where to look when they
didn't... They remembered my name every time I walked in the store
fer cryin' out loud! (Sign that you spend too much time/money in auto
parts stores...) ;-) However, there have been some staffing changes,
and the store is nowhere near as nice to shop in as before. (There is
one guy there who knows me as the "guy with the cuda" but there
just isn't the repor I had with the other guys.) They still have
the exact same product, but its just missing something.
Once you find out who are the staffers that know their stuff,
try to come in when they're working, or wait until they are free
and just deal with them. If it is staffed by total idiots, try
a different store or chain, or if you have no choice, something
I find helpful is to visit autozone.com before going into the
store to pick something up. This way, you know exactly what they're
going to ask when they go to the computer. I usually answer the next
question in the series before they can even read it off to me. For
example, I wanted to get a lean burn distributor for my '70 Barracuda
(no such animal) so I looked it up on the site beforehand and ordered a
distributor for a '77 New Yorker. That's the difference a good staff
can make - when they are good, you can go in there with wacky things
like that and they'll take it in stride and try to help rather than just
regurgitating the error on the computer. Without the staff, you need
to do the work yourself. Something else that is nice about autozone.com
is you can avoid the whole computer question/answer session alltogether -
you can build a "shopping list" on the web site, send it to the store,
then when you get there they just pull it up out of the computer and
pull the parts off the shelf - nice feature.
Anyway, to summarize, I think pretty much all auto parts stores
are the same - what makes a good auto parts store is not the name on
the front of the building but the people behind the counter. (As is
true for many things in life...)
---Jon-
.---- Jon Steiger ------ jon@dakota-truck.net or jon@jonsteiger.com -----. | I'm the: AOPA, DoD, EAA, NMA, NRA, SPA, USUA. Rec & UL Pilot - SEL | | '70 Barracuda, '92 Ram 4x4, '96 Dakota, '96 Intruder 1400, '96 FireFly | `----------------------------------------- http://www.jonsteiger.com ----'
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