Which of these is generally the best store for someone who will be a return customer; offers knowledgeable staff, decent rewards, and good prices:reliability ratio.

I Normally use o'reillys just because a friend works there.

o'reilly for normal stuff

napa for that weird hard to find crap

This. Napa sometimes carries nicer brand parts as well. They are more expensive though. I go to Orielly's unless it's something basic like chemicals/car wash products/spark plugs etc. For that i go to advance. There is one about 1/4 mile from my house.

Where my car is, the Autozone and O'Reilly are literally next to each other so the distance isn't a factor. Not sure where the napa is, but I looked on their site and they have really short hours so I've pretty much ruled them out. Did a bit of googling, and everything is saying O'Reilly's is better in almost all scenarios than Autozone so I think I'm just gonna be a loyal member there. Plus my roommate's friend works there.

Autozone doesn't bold a candle to napa.. So NAPA hands down.


Oh, this is also because ive never seen an O'Reillys.

I've had extremely bad luck with Napa. I won't even go there anymore.

2 bad tie rod ends
3 bad wheel bearings
and a faulty battery
in about a year

Here in Canada I use part source 90% of the time when getting new stuff.

3 wheel bearings. On a fwd econo town car I hardly drive. Less than 20k miles.
The truck I swapped an outer tie rod twice because it was garbage, the alignment shop couldn't do anything with it.

This post was edited by IB0T on Jun 13 2015 08:52am

National Chain Auto Parts stores have employees who don't know much about cars. They just hire whoever applies for a job. Look for your local momma pop auto part store, they will have access to all brands that the national chains carry, will be more knowledgeable in cars and have better prices.