02 Venture starter from Autozone

Just wanted to let everyone know of some issues with the Autozone starter for an 02 Venture.....

A few weeks ago, the Van wouldn't start, just got a 'click' at the starter. Battery good, connections good, so I replace the starter wth a rebuilt one from Autozone; $148 plus core.

Starts right up, everything great. 2 weeks later same issue; 'click' at starter, won't turn over.

Pull the starter and take it back to Autozone. There little tester says the solenoid works and the starter motor turns. I point out that the motor is not under load, and they reluctantly exchange for another one.

Install starter #2, and everything works.....for 1 week. 'Click' at the starter again. Pull the starter out, take it back to Autozone.

Get a really beligerant SOB who tries to do the same test, then refuses to exchange and honor the warrenty. Finally get a manager to exchange out the starter for me, take it home and install it and everything works great....for 2 days.

At this point, it's got to be something else, right? I recheck the solenoid, wiring, check for continuity, bypass the wiring with test leads; everything I can think of. Still can't get the starter to turn (can't have 3 bad starters in a row, right?), so I finally admit defeat and tow it to the dealer.

Guess what? The starter's bad.

3 starters in a row for the 02 Venture from Autozone have crapped out on me. Autozone says the same company that rebuilds their's also does the AC Delco's.

$500 later I have a new starter installed at the dealership.....ouch!

Autozone did reimburse me for the cost of the original starter and core, but everyone take note!!! Don't buy the remanufactured starters from Autozone!

Hope this saves somebody the headache I just had to go through!

Sounds very similar to an incident I had with them 2 years ago. My father-in-law's '95 C1500's alternator went bad. To make the long story short, went through 4 "reman" alternators before one actually worked. Ended up wiping out all 3 stores in my area's stock of them. I had a friend help me with replacing them and he used to work at Autozone. When they started giving me an issue about returning so many, he told them he'd seen it many times before where he worked. Sometimes the factory that rebuilds them may inadvertenly install a bad part from a "lot" that may be defective from the factory. Usually the factory will issue a recall, but many times they do not in hopes that the problem will blow over and the customer will either return it enough times to get another one with different parts from a different batch, or just give up all together and go somewhere else. I, myself worked in the parts retail industry many years ago and saw a similar thing, where the rebuild factory will release a bunch of rebuilds with bad parts, and they are defective right out of the box. Kind of says something about quality control doesn't it? I haven't heard that one about the same company doing Autozone's AND A C Delcos.