Spark plugs

[Bob Don]

Originally Posted by Keith 944

Alan, I am pretty sure I picked them up at Wal-Mart might want to check there...

There's an old urban myth that plugs in blister packs sold in dept. stores are somehow inferior to ones at auto parts stores. Any truth to that?

[Alan Roehrich]

Originally Posted by Bob Don

There's an old urban myth that plugs in blister packs sold in dept. stores are somehow inferior to ones at auto parts stores. Any truth to that?

With many things that are manufactured, there are varying acceptable quality parameters. When one manufacturer makes the same product for many companies, each company can have its own acceptable quality window.

Realize that this is intentionally vague and simplified:

Company A says they'll take x,000,000 parts, at price point 1, and their acceptable quality window is >....................<

Company B says they'll only take x00,000 parts, at price point 3, and their acceptable quality window is >.......<

Now, company A will sell that product for $1.00, selling 10 times as many as company B, and accepting a relatively high warranty rate.

Company B will sell the same product for $1.75, selling less, but having a relatively low warranty rate.

You can often go to a big box store and see that they have cheaper prices, but then look closely and find out the product is made cheaper, and often it is made cheaper because the big box store has the buying power to convince the manufacturer to make a lesser quality product to sell at a lower price point, but in a higher volume. And they hope that the consumer will simply decide the product is so cheap that when it fails, they'll throw it away and buy another rather than deal with the hassle of warranty.

Now, about 20 years ago, I had a guy from a major automotive parts supplier tell me that they actually had five tiers of parts. Tier 1 was OE, best quality, tier 2 was new car dealer, tier 3 was "professional" parts houses (at the time, NAPA, Carquest, J.B. Cook, etc) tier 4 was cheap parts stores (Autozone, Advance, etc) and finally tier 5 was Walmart/KMart, etc. At the time I was working at a high end shop that was in a building shared with a "professional" parts store that was actually owned by a company that was a warehouse distributor for an OE parts supplier.

I'd say at least a couple of those tiers may have gone away. The "professional" parts stores are getting fewer, and the Autozone/Advance stores more numerous and powerful. At this point, it is possible that the OE and new car dealer tiers are now one and the same, as are the "professional" parts store and the Autozone/Advance tier are likely one and the same.