Is Carparts.com Legit?

‍What is CarParts.com

CarParts.com sells a huge variety of auto parts. They have 6 warehouses across the country and they sell over 1 million individual parts. CarParts.com offers a “Guaranteed Fit” program based on their vehicle selector, fast shipping in as little as 2 business days, and a 90-day return policy.

Is CarParts.com legit?

We are first going to say that we measure “legit” in a particular way.

• Are you going to get the product you requested?
• Does the site have a safe way to take payments?
• Does the company offer customer service and refunds?
• Can you contact the company?
• Are negative customer reviews handled positively?

The answer for all of the above is yes.

How do we know CarParts.com is legit?

When thinking about whether or not CarParts.co is legit, we looked at a few sites that provider user written reviews about the business.

Better Business Bureau

CarParts.com has an A+ rating on the well known Better Business Bureau website. While CarParts has many written complaints, 225 complaints for a website as big as CarParts.com is not that many.

More important, CarParts.com actively responds to every customer complaint in detail. CarParts.com clearly cares about their customers and their issues and responds appropriately with many complaints marked as resolved.

Sometimes companies can’t quite meet customer expectations every single time, but at least they are proactive about fixing.

SiteJabber

Again, CarParts has complaints on SiteJabber. Using a little context here, keep in mind that “SiteJabber” is clearly an attempt to gather complaints. CarParts does carry a not terrible 3.3 stars out of 5, and the SiteJabber site says they respond to reviews and complaints within 7 hours - which is pretty quick.

Reseller Ratings

Reseller Ratings has a lot of reviews for CarParts.com. Like over 150,000. Their overall rating is pretty good at 4 stars. Many of the ratings speak highly of shipping speed and customer service. ResellerRating is a strong indicator that you’ll get what you expected from CarParts.com most of the time.

How does CarParts.com earn their reputation?

Easy Returns

CarParts.com offers both a lifetime replacement guarantee and a quick and easy system online to return parts that you don’t need.

The lifetime replacement guarantee is a nice feature that might help promote CarParts.com reputation. CarParts.com and their customers expert a part to last the lifetime of the vehicle (with the exception of parts that are meant to wear out like brakes, of course) so if a part has a problem, customers can order a new part, remove the old part, and send it back. The only exception CarParts.com discusses is that the guarantee is not transferable. In other words, if you sell your car, that part is no longer under the guarantee for the new owner.

Customers do have 90 days to return an item for any reason, too.

Customer Service

CarParts.com offers phone, email, and live chat customer service. This is a good combination. Often sites that do not offer real, or good customer service offer a single email or don’t make customer server info prominent. CarParts.com puts the information right out there to see so you can make contact if needed.

What problems do CarParts.com customers report?

The most common problem recently reported by CarParts.com are shipping delays. Customers often order car parts when they have actual issues with their cars - and in many places cars are an essential part of every day life.

Some described having their vehicle disassembled in the driveway or garage, but were waiting multiple days for the arrival of a shipment. Keeping in mind that CarParts.com is only partially responsible for shipments as they don’t deliver their own parts, this might be a problem of local carriers - and potentially buyer impatience. While CarParts.com does have multiple warehouses across the country, they can’t quite guarantee 100% on time shipping.

Recent auto parts shortages haven’t helped. Supply chain issues can strain any company and make their inventory harder to get - especially with a company with as many parts as CarParts.com. The site doesn’t offer any particular communication about issues, but we hope they offer direct communication via email or text when problems come up.

How does CarParts.com fix customer service issues?

While many of the complaints involve shipping issues, customers seem to sometimes just cancel their order when it’s delayed and buy a part locally. In this situation, the most common resolution from CarParts.com is to give a refund. Many of the responses to customer service issues provided by CarParts.com show the amount refunded, and show that the problem was resolved. We could consider this is a good resolution as at least the customer got their money back when their expectations could not be met.