I have worked for all three companies in the last 5 years and as both an employee and a customer I feel O'reillys is by far superior in customer service(Lifetime Warranties) which will be tracked under your phone number, they also 9/10 are the cheapest of the three and if you ever find that they aren't, they will gladly do price adjustments to and competitors price as long as its not an online only retailer(amazon, LMC, ECT). when i was employed with auto zone I was rebuilding the whole front steering and suspension on my truck and after buying tie rods only to find mismatching parts in the boxes labeled with the same P/N and missing half my zero fittings and castle nutss that were "included" I decided my employee pricing wasn't worth the lack of quality and peace of mind, so I bought 99% of my parts at O'reillys have had no complaints with any of my new front end thus far, and they even hired me on the spot. which I am grateful for, the benefits are far better and the environment I work in is great, love every member on my team,love coming to work and working along side parts countermen whom I can trust to provide the same advice and customer service that we all hope to find when we walk through the doors at our local parts house.

On Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 9:29:16 AM UTC-7, /dev/phaeton wrote:
> Using online catalogues, i've priced out the parts to rebuild the
> front end on my truck. (In-store pricing might be slightly different)
> This will mean 2 upper control arm assys, 2 lower ball joints, control
> arm bushings all around, and inner and outer tie rod ends for both
> sides.
>
> At NAPA, it's about $450 for parts, at Autozone about $370, and
> O'Reilly will be just under $300. These are all using store-branded
> parts, not the generic (in NAPA's case) or Moog brand (in O'Reilly's
> case). Is there any significant reason for this, or any major quality
> differences? We're talking about a bunch of machined metal and
> rubber, not microcontrollers. For all I know they could all be made
> by the same contractor.
>
> Tempting as it it is, I see entire kits of everything listed above on
> eBay for under $100. They're generic names, but no more generic
> sounding to me than the store brands.
>
> Any thoughts?
>
> Thanks.