You just have to shop it all out. Nobody has all the parts. Nobody has all the best prices. Nobody always has the fastest delivery. Etc, etc.

As licensed rebuilders, my son and I buy a lot of parts and we usually shop for the best price. But sometimes time is of the essence, sometimes the particular quality rules, availability is becoming more of an issue and on and on.

Ebay ends up getting more of our business than the other suppliers. But we get parts from RockAuto, Amazon, Keystone, CarPart, as well as the local auto supplies and others. It takes time to shop the parts we need from all these suppliers. And we don't necessarily shop every single part from every single supplier, but we do shop most items over $20.

There are a lot of ways to shop RockAuto that will save you money. Use the 5% code on RetailMeNot. Add small things like oil filters and wiper blades to the order that usually do not add to the shipping. Go to the HTML close-out parts. Make sure to get all that you can from the same warehouse, etc. Ever with all that, Ebay beats them the majority of the time. And often on the very same part. The local auto supplies are the real losers in this. Five years ago, they got more than 50% of our business. Today, it is less than 5%. I don't understand how they can have such dunces on the counter and still have the mail order guys beat them by 25% or even 50%. Something doesn't compute. And just to be clear, we are often talking the same, exact part. Apples to apples.

So, things change. You just have to shop it all out and see what works for you.

I'm done with Rock Auto as they do not honor the warranty on a bad part (defective). If I had installed it and it failed, maybe. Never again. They lost me over an $8 (or so) lower control arm bushing...

I stopped going for the higher priced 2 or 3 day shipping. Did it once or twice. The parts would come in 6 days or more. Now, I just get the lowest shipping.

It IS the shipper, but it's Rock Auto's shipper, and if Rock Auto gets enough complaints, maybe they'll enough leverage over their shipper to force some change for the better. OH, but as said...give the shipper an ear full too.

Rock Auto was ok with warranty work for me. I had a lifetime Walker muffler on a car for over 10 years. When it finally rusted out, they sent me a new one which I paid for, and when I returned the rusted out one at their expense, they refunded my money.

Nobody is perfect. With your 'one strike and you're out' policy, you are going to run out of suppliers. Everybody we have ever dealt with has made mistakes including RA. And to be sure, there are unpardonable sins. But your policy will hurt you more than it will hurt RA.

It's about not backing up a defective product because I had it on the shelf "too long" (about six months). Had I installed it and it wore out they would have covered it. That is simply unacceptable to me. Warranty should have covered it...

I do understand. But you are still probably hurting yourself more than them. It's a shame, but it is the reality of it. Good luck.

I just ordered some parts for my Jeep from RA last week. One set of parts came from a seperate warehouse, then the other set of parts. I used the lowest price ground shipping option. I had ALL the parts in my order within 3 days of my ordering them...so I never had a problem (so far) with them.