Why I don't carry A-1 Cardone anymore

[Dr.Jass]

I'm sure you're familiar with remanufacturer A-1 Cardone, whether it be buying locally or shopping online. They're ubiquitous and impossible to miss. Our store no longer carries their products, something I was putting in motion already when our franchiser decided to drop the entire A-1 line.

I've mentioned their quality slipping in the past, and I even hammered one of their reps on it a few years back. It's why I was finding alternative parts to literally everything Cardone remanufactures. Stretch can testify not only to the failure rate, but also to Cardone's tech line's absolute refusal to admit they might've shipped a bad part. The replacement game's been pretty smooth sailing other than wiper motors. At this point if a customer needs a wiper motor I'll either send them to, or source one from the OE dealer... something into which I was forced after a customer with a 2008 Ford Escape got his third bad Cardone in a row. None of them lasted more than six weeks. I don't care how long the warranty is, if it has to be done two or three times (and that's not uncommon) any warranty is meaningless.

Now the situation has bit me quite literally in my own back yard. The fresh-oota-the-box A-1 Cardone master cylinder in Agnes has failed, with exactly zero miles on it. That the car sat for a year or so since installation is immaterial; it had fluid in it the entire time. More than one of the wrecks I've dragged home over the years sat for far longer, some with contaminated fluid. The longest that I can verify is 13 years--I had to get that car running--and those brakes worked despite what looked like swamp water in the master. I drove the prick 50+ miles home and the brakes were nearly flawless. As an added bonus, the master cylinder on Aggie is now R&R only. That means I'd literally have to wait for Cardone to rebuild the one I have, which they were not able to successfully accomplish the first time they had it.

I should mention at this point that I fucking hate brake hydraulic work. It's not that I can't do it well; for some reason I just really don't like doing it.

Long and short of it: Unless you're a fan of doing the same job repeatedly in short order, do not buy anything with which A-1 Cardone is involved. Ask your parts guy/gal who does the reman if it's store brand; if it's Cardone politely decline. It doesn't matter how difficult or expensive it is to find an alternative, their product is simply not worth the frustration and headaches. If you simply can't figure out any other way around it, PM me and I will figure out a solution.

Yes, in some cases Cardone offers 100% new product. It should be avoided if for no other reason than to punish them for what they've done to guys like Stretch and me over the past decade-plus. There was a time when their name meant a premium-quality part. I used to sell their product with the utmost confidence, but what they've become is like being betrayed by an old friend.

 

[Dr.Jass]

If you're curious as to the catalyst for their downfall, thank your local O'Reilly's Auto Parts. About 15 years back, when O'Reilly's really started to explode nationally, they approached Cardone and said, "Everything that you reman, we're going to carry in every store... and this is what we're going to pay you for it. You'll make it up in volume." Cardone agreed to it, and never approached recovering the dollars in volume so they immediately started cutting corners, offshoring work, etc. Almost immediately, electronics like ABS modules and PCMs jumped to a 70+% failure rate, with more than half of the failures being bad right out of the box.

If only every bad business decision was so justly rewarded.

 

[restoman]

The last two years we were in business, I noticed the for-shit quality of Cardone.
We had a decent enough customer, a concrete contractor, that brought us almost all of his work, and more than a few of his clients got recommended to us. A loyal customer.
We replaced the starter on his personal F-250, with a CQ reman (Cardone), which up till near then, was a good, reliable alternative to being bent over the dealer's parts counter.
If I recall correctly, the truck arrived back on a flatbed no less than 3 times. The first was for the original part failure, the next two were on my dime. It's how you treat good customers...
Every time, CQ came through with a warranty but the last reman cost me something like $150 in flatbed charges from an hour away. Plus, the labour to R & I the starter (again), plus the very hefty cost of potentially losing a customer's confidence.
I paid for the OEM starter out of my own pocket, just to keep the poor guy happy. I bumped into him 3 or 4 years back and he remarked on how his truck (still the same one) still has that last, OEM, starter, and even though the truck now does farm duty only, it starts every time.
Cardone is still the biggest Reman deal around, as far as I know, but we didn't touch them after that.

 

[Dr.Jass]

These days the 800lb gorilla of reman appears to be BBB Industries, known as Genco (their big-truck/equipment line branded as Wilson) back when all they did was rotating electrical. Nobody's perfect, but I've been selling their electrical for about 15 years with under a half-percent failure rate. They have never turned down a warranty nor argued with me that it couldn't possibly be their part... very reminiscent of Westling prior to their tanking back in the 1990s. Unlike Westling (or anyone else for that matter), I've warrantied years-old diesel starters with nary a peep from them: "Just pay the man."

I've also had spectacular results with Precision steering racks, which ironically are the least-expensive option I sell. Those were an option all along within my current system, but early on some people preferred to pay extra to get a Cardone. I'd guess that nearly 50% of those cars had a Precision by the end, after warrantying the Cardone unit and the owner having anywhere from $20-$100 returned to them in the process. I gave up on the Cardone racks completely while still in Escanaba, around 2007. Have I warrantied a Precision? Yes sir, but a failure rate of less than 2% is well within the boundaries of "really good" for a remanufacturer.

Cambro, the St. Vincent de Paul of caliper remanufacturers (usually double digits lower in price than anyone else), has also been very good to me. Again, nobody's perfect and we've had bad ones out of the box but you'll never get perfection in the parts world, particularly when dealing with remanufactured parts. Humans do the work... errors get made, flaws get missed, and they don't exactly try to install them at the factory.

I think my favorite reman gaff was a Perfect Stop caliper (our store brand) before we switched suppliers to Genco/BBB. I can't remember who the old vendor was, but it wasn't Cardone. The caliper went to the customer; it came right back on the same delivery. "You have another one of those?" I didn't, but he told me to look at it when it came back. I did: they'd literally forgotten to install the piston.

 

[restoman]

"... they'd literally forgotten to install the piston. "
I've had that happen!
Alternators without brushes is another I've run into.

Several times, I've had brand new boxes show up on the delivery wagon with old cores in them... neatly wrapped in plastic. Methinks that was the work of some disgruntled employee.

 

[Dr.Jass]

Several times, I've had brand new boxes show up on the delivery wagon with old cores in them... neatly wrapped in plastic. Methinks that was the work of some disgruntled employee.

It's more likely that a previous customer bought the part and returned the core, and the delivery or returns person did not open the box and check, and took it back as new. If the box is nice and clean, people assume it's new since core boxes are generally pretty filthy. The real kick in the teeth is that the same thing happens at the warehouse level: the store returns it as new and the warehouse puts it back on the shelf without checking. Eventually it gets shipped out to a different store, and the issue's not discovered until it's in the customer's hands.
I had an instance in late 2018 where I'd ordered a caliper for a customer, who cancelled it before I even got it. When it came in, it went right on the return shelf and then back to the warehouse. I got a nasty phone call about trying to return a core as new even though I'd never sold the part. I was able to prove the latter, and a different store got the smackdown (and billback) about checking boxes.