I was in there returning a warranty item and the regional manager informs me that I need a receipt for my item because the store cannot keep up with my purchases because they don’t want to be responsible if that information gets stolen. Other parts stores can look up everything that I have bought since the beginning of time. It just seemed like a cop out answer to me. Who wants to steal the knowledge that I bought a water pump in 2016? I’ve never had that problem with Autozone. Prices seem a bit higher at Advanced too. You have to really work their Perks program to get a decent deal.
Also the guy wanted me to plop the broken water pump on the counter in order to get a replacement one - The one I needed to get home to take off and the same one I needed to get to the store in the first place. They didn’t want to sell me one and then give me a refund when I brought the bad one back. I did buy one from Autozone, got mine warrantied at Advanced, and took the new one back to Autozone, (regional manager said that they are the same) but it was a major hassle and cost me about an hour of running around and 10 miles worth of gas. It just seems that these guys want to make it hard on their customers.
When I read the original post I called it more of a rant then a question. Only one side presented and it was not really clear. This person needs to contact the corporate office instead of a forum.
@wesley_1603
Is this the only store that gives you trouble or do you have problems with practically all retailers? Is there a pattern or cause & effect cycle at work, here?
To avoid problems like this I have always kept my receipts for “everything that I have bought since the beginning of time.” That way if there’s a problem for people trying to cater to me I have a back-up. CSA
No I brought my old part in in the box from autozone and the regional manager assumed it wasn’t their part and got kind of huffy. He told me I had to have a receipt. He found all of my info and said that I could only get a replacement. I said fine then, give me a replacement. He gave me a receipt to pick up one from another store because they didn’t have it. I went to 4 different autoparts stores.
It just bothered me that he said that they don’t keep parts records on file because of virtual theft when they have this crap on file. He looked it up and found it.
I stopped at the Advance by my house and they said that they could not look up my warranty and that I had to go to the Advance where I bought the part. They didn’t even seem to want to sell me the parts I needed. so I just went to the next closest store instead. Autozone. The Advance manager was very interested in why the first Advance wouldn’t look up my part warranty even after he lectured me about my receipts.
I can appreciate where you are coming from, now on the reverse side I had to return a part to Menards, wrong size, they scan the receipt and automatically credit it to my debit card. OK tin hat specialist, that means any purchase receipt is automatically linked to my credit card account, and that means my account info is in their database, and that means if hacked my credit account info goes along with other data. be paranoid people, there is no way of making sure your stored info cannot be hacked. Oh and tape over the laptop webcam? sure former FBI director has tape over his.
Car related there are places that help people and those that do not. I work with the places that are not a problem for me, hope you find one.
If I understand this you have a store credit for a part, but you have purchased the same part from AutoZone which means now you have to find a way to use that store credit that may only be good for a certain amount of time. You never thought to call the other Advance stores to see if they had the part? Sounds like taking a minor problem and turning it into a bigger one.
Thank you for clarifying that. Just my 2 cents, but I’ve run into several instances (once was last year) where AutoZone’s records showed that I had never purchased the part in question.
One was a badly faded receipt that I had inked the transaction number on it by hand. According to them (and I was looking over the PC screen at the same time) that transaction never happened.
I didn’t even know that a customer could just ask them to look up the receipts in their computer. I’ve always just brought along the receipts with me in a situation like that. As far as requiring you turn in the old one to get a new one under warranty, they have to do that b/c if you forgot and didn’t bring the old one back to them they couldn’t get reimbursed by the manufacturer. I expect they’d would have given you a refund tho when you brought the old one back. I have had a bevy of troubles over the years with national chains tho, mostly due to the staff there not really knowing very much about auto parts and auto repairs, just how to work the cash register, so I generally don’t use national chains for car parts; there’s a much better local place that has a very car-repair-knowledgeable staff I use instead.
I don’t keep receipts for anything, nor do I expect the vendor to keep track of my purchases for me. It seems entirely reasonable to expect me to provide a receipt if I want something warrantied. I don’t base buying decisions on rewards cards or perks, in fact I avoid those programs.
The picture you show is of a broken water pump that was damaged by negligence or improper installation. There’s no way that should be a warranty item in the first place, and any sane manager would deny warranty on that.
[quote=“asemaster, post:15, topic:101906, full:true”]The picture you show is of a broken water pump that was damaged by negligence or improper installation. There’s no way that should be a warranty item in the first place, and any sane manager would deny warranty on that.[/quote]I had my store manager approve warranty returns on parts as obviously misused or worse after I had denied them. The obnoxious wheel got the grease in those cases. Not my way of doing business.
Pretty much ALL stores (except some of the small mom and pop stores) will keep all receipts for every transaction for decades. Storing the data is trivial. Some companies don’t care if you have a receipt or not…they’ll check their records. In this day and age of electronic transactions the company that doesn’t have a mechanism to look up a receipt for a customer just wants to make their customers jump through hoops to get a warranty claim. It’s extremely trivial for the company to get the receipt if they have a mechanism (aka - software solution). Companies like LL Bean have been doing it for decades.
I keep my receipts, because I know most companies don’t want to provide that service.
What gets me is these companies don’t give you this service…yet they are very big into target advertising based on your past purchases. They’ll check your past purchases and send you advertisement for something their data analysis thinks you might want to buy. Data mining has been a huge growth industry for the almost a decade now…and growing so no signs of slowing down.
I don’t keep any receipts.
The places I go use your home phone number to look it up anyway.
To require a paper receipt is a hoop I’m not interested in participating.
So be it. If it fails, I suck it up and buy a new one.
But that’s only happened a couple times in my life so why play the game?
Most of the time these days, my name is Johnny Cash and I have no phone number…
Personally, I think the laws should be made such that they are required to delete the credit/debit information once the transaction clears.
