What is some of your Pet Peeve's

[WinterDeere]

Welcome to rural New England! Before there was such a thing as a town dump, people just dumped their trash in a gully behind the house, after a while it got covered up and forgotten. At least until years later when someone wants to dig a hole there and hits 100 years' worth of rusty mattress springs, old shoes, bottles, etc.

Not just New England! I found most of an antique car in a shallow grave behind my barn. It was in a spot that would've been alongside the original (1734 - 1980's) driveway, and it seems it was just parked there and left to disintegrate into the earth.

I had an uncle who was born, raised, and died on an old family farm near @kenmbz, who as far as I know, never had trash service. I remember staying there in the 1980's, they'd burn most of their trash and had a pile for whatever wouldn't burn in the woods behind the house. The house has been there since the early 1700's, so there's probably some interesting stuff at the bottom of that pile.

 

[WinterDeere]

Every brand under the sun, including OEM , reliability delivered to my door at a fair price
My experience is you can definitely trust Rock Auto

Fair enough, and I'm not arguing with this point. I'm just debating how useful it is to the customer, to carry bad brands with high failure rate. Rather than "every brand under the sun", I'd choose to buy my parts from a place that I know only carries a few brands with known reasonably low return or failure rates. I don't see any value in carrying or giving options to buy stuff that's inferior or prone to failure.

 

[Oaktree]

That is much of the Rock Auto inventory, the local stores that go out of business,....

Might have been once upon a time, but how many mom & pop (or even regional chain) parts stores are left?

 

[tradosaurus]

You're being a bit hard on Escaped, Dark. If you read the post to which he was responding, it was obvious he was saying you can't trust Rock Auto to weed out and not sell bad product for you. You seem to agree with what he's saying, in that regard.

Leaving a customer to choose between four different starter motors of questionable quality, when you have no experience in buying starter motors from those four brands for that given vehicle -- a once in a lifetime purchase for most -- isn't very useful to any customer. Much better if the retailer uses their much larger experience to just weed out the brands with the highest defect rate, for the consumer.

When I owned ICE vehicles I would try to buy OEM parts that were labor intensive, such as an alternator for a 2005 Ford Freestyle.
Even if I had to go to the dealer parts dept and pay more.

 

[tradosaurus]

That quality level wasn't universal. In highschool in the early 80s I worked at a parts chain named Nationwise . The quality of their "rebuilt" alternators, starters, water pumps, etc, was abysmal. We had a 2 yard dumpster for returns and it would get filled every week. Even us broke employees who got a discount would buy our parts from NAPA because even though they were liberal with warranty exchanges it just wasn't worth the labor to reinstall a starter several times. They did sell oil as a loss leader, which was their only redeeming quality.

But you're right that these days you can't even trust NAPA and certainly not Rock Auto. I pretty much only use OEM parts.

Uh oh. U aren't on the RockAuto love train like DarkBlack.
I got burned by Amazon on counterfeit parts so for spark plugs, oil filters when I owned ICE vehicles I would usually go to the dealer.
Of course with my Tesla I have 80% less moving parts and no oil changes.

 

[WinterDeere]

I got burned by Amazon on counterfeit parts so for spark plugs, oil filters when I owned ICE vehicles I would usually go to the dealer.

For spark plugs and oil filters... sure. Who even cares if you're paying double or triple on an $8 item?

But I was shopping yesterday for a new keyfob for our teen's Mini Cooper S. You can find them online from a few sources with good reviews, $250 - $300 is the going rate.

I happened to be at the dealership yesterday, and asked their parts counter for pricing on the same. Their price? Oh... $650+!

I buy OEM when it's practical, but I don't call $650 for a spare key that will only ever see use if we manage to lose the one we received with the car, very "practical".

 

[Eagle1]

Might have been once upon a time, but how many mom & pop (or even regional chain) parts stores are left?

Ours here closed last year. Small towns (<1000) work different.

Now it's 30 miles, an hour of winding black top, to nearest. Pretty much means I'll order it online and wait. Beats driving and when you get there they can't find the part they said they have in stock.

 

[NoTrespassing]

Not just New England! I found most of an antique car in a shallow grave behind my barn. It was in a spot that would've been alongside the original (1734 - 1980's) driveway, and it seems it was just parked there and left to disintegrate into the earth.

I had an uncle who was born, raised, and died on an old family farm near @kenmbz, who as far as I know, never had trash service. I remember staying there in the 1980's, they'd burn most of their trash and had a pile for whatever wouldn't burn in the woods behind the house. The house has been there since the early 1700's, so there's probably some interesting stuff at the bottom of that pile.

When I was very young, probably 4 years old, about 1968, my mother and father moved out of a small town of 200 people into an old farmhouse outside of town. I'm sure the rent was dirt cheap, we didn't have much money. The house was full of junk upstairs and my dad had to get rid of it. He and a buddy hand dug trenches in the back yard and buried all the trash that wasn't burnable. I'm sure it's all still there, I know the guy that owns the property now.

 

[whitenorth]

I used to metal detect for coins. Your local towns use the parks for getting rid of trash also. I'd find tons a pull tabs, glass, cans, nails, etc just inches under the surface. It wasn't just one park but, all. Oddly and sadly enough, it always seemed like the parks with "Veteran" in the name were always the worst.

 

[Jstpssng]

I used to metal detect for coins. Your local towns use the parks for getting rid of trash also. I'd find tons a pull tabs, glass, cans, nails, etc just inches under the surface. It wasn't just one park but, all. Oddly and sadly enough, it always seemed like the parks with "Veteran" in the name were always the worst.

I metal detected around the entry to what was once the family greenhouse/flower shop since Moby Dick was a minnow, thinking I might find some old coins. I got all sorts of hits, then started digging.
It was a gold mine; bits of wire, enough nails to shingle a house, I even found a padlock key although I don't know which one it went to. The only thing I didn't find was any old coins.