Originally Posted by macarose
This is Steven Lang. I study the long-term reliability of vehicles for a living. Let me give you the short answer on FCP.
It's a first class operation. Their customer services is excellent and I have recommended them for nearly 20 years. Even way back when they were called FCPGroton.
I would endorse them for an owner who fits these three criteria:
1) You are certain that you're going to keep your European daily driver for well over a decade.
2) You live in an area where the roads are rough.
3) You do your own wrenching.
If that's you then invest in a relationship with FCP. As others have mentioned elsewhere, it can also be a good fit for your dry consumables (brakes, air filters, wipers) that are tyically on discount at Rockauto.
The lifetime oil guarantee is more of a toss-up. The time spent packing everything up and going to the post office vs. watching for deals here and recycling locally is a tough barometer to measure. Your cost to send back varies and your access to the post office vs. a local recycler may vary as well. If the post office was down the street I would do it but the two nearby me are nearly seven miles away. I have over a half-dozen drop off points between here and there. I also have the luxury of waiting years to do this if I need to.
On an oil/filter cost basis, the near free deals we get here at BITOG combined with cheap oil filter bulk purchases elsewhere usually make that a better value proposition. It depends on the oil requirements of your vehicle and the marketplace.
So to sum up (almost typed sump up!), if one, two and three describe you and the post office is just down the street you may come out ahead by using FCP for your oil changes. They are a qualty operation and their customer service is excellent.
Hope this helps.
Steve
https://www.thedrive.com/the-hammer...t-amazon-by-offering-lifetime-guarantees
I've read anecdotal comments about how Amazon warehouses product where say counterfeit parts get intermingled with genuine parts. Then there's the nuance between different types of sellers on Amazon which made it difficult to determine which was not a third-party fly-by-night outfit. I ran across this when looking for spark plugs. For me it's just not worth the hassle.
