January 2023 by Robert P.
I mean no disrespect to employees of this business when I tell, story. My experience is not with any local parts store, it it with the company as a whole, and feel the people of this great nation need to know the frustration, stress, fear of losing life by way of brake loss due to oil contaminated car quest oil sold as new. A warning to EVERYONE! Advance first of all does not care at all about how any of their products have impacted your life, or may have caused any stress, fear, frustration, they simply only care about MONEY! Surprise, right? I've even written to the CEO about this, and here's another surprise, want to guess? You are correct, NOTHING, NOT EVEN AN APOLOGY! See, most people who buy parts from this company, do work on cars themselves, and in some cases while you're taking off a part you send someone to buy a part, so you can cut the job time in half. Listen very carefully! If you send someone who lives at your SAME ADDRESS and not thinking they give their number instead of your, this creates a huge problem, so please I warn you, dispute what stress of fixing a car you have going on at that point, for the love of God, tell them to use your number! A caliper went bad in a 2010 ford focus, but there's a parts store down the road that can get me up and going so while I thought at the time, I'll start taking the components off the car and send someone to pick up parts, this was a mistake, not this company! A caliper, brake fluid, clamp tools, and pads were purchased to fix the problem, new caliper replaced, pads installed, brakes bled with what we thought was new fluid, I peeled a foil seal off the lid, and didn't think to call the lab to have them test this fluid, I mean who does? So now a few days go by, and brakes start getting worse, and then to a compete loss, so I'm inspecting, looking for a leak, but couldn't find anything, at the time I suspected maybe the booster, but I'm not a mechanic and wouldn't know how to diagnose that. $485 later and loss of a vehicle for a week, the shop changed the master cylinder and flushed the system hoping that would fix problem, and did for a week then brake loss again, so back to shop! Now $805 later everything needed to be be replaced, and another master cylinder, but that was warrantied, or it would have been over $1,000 for the second visit. I forgot to mention the shop verified the brake fluid bottle purchased, and used to bleed brakes was in fact the same contaminated in the car. The irony here is that more money was given to Advance Auto Parts because all the new parts were purchased by the shop that went into the car. You see, I didnt pay for any of those parts either, I mean I did by those parts, but using Advance Auto Parts way of thinking I guess I really don't have any claim, I have the shops receipts because I demanded them, but I guess Advance Auto Parts is right, those parts in the car now belong to the shop, I just paid for them. Big companies have big lawyers! This post is not to rant, or keep anyone from dealing with someone they trust, the employee's in these stores are great! I've never had a problem, it's the company itself, the CEO that cant say he's sorry a life could have been lost, but honestly although I sent multiple messages, even Expressing how important it is he reads this, I'm not sure the greed at the top even told him about it, but SHAME ON THIS COMPANY FOR PUTTING $1,300 above a life. They even got a piece of that, after I "didnt buy a caliper, pads, and tanted fluid" they benefited by selling a master cylinder, another 2 calipers, a lot of fluid, another set of pads, wheel cylinders, hoses and so on! Due to this not being a single store, and company itself I will repost everywhere. Again this means no disrespect to local businesses, as I said I think you guys are great. This is to inform the great people of this nation how this company at a higher level works, Thank you!
