I know this may make me sound like a broken record, but I have to reiterate how dissatisfied I am with their packaging. In the last week, I have ordered a bunch of parts for all my vehicles both from Amazon and from RockAuto. The RockAuto order was for a lower radiator hose and a set of valve cover gaskets. They came in two shipments. The first one I received was the hose, crammed into a box so small they had to double the hose over on itself. There was no bubble wrap or any other type of protection. The box had a bunch of fine metal particles in it, too. I have no clue what they were, but they were definitely metallic since the magnet they always throw in had attracted most of it. I flushed the hose out twice to make sure they didnt end up in my cooling system. The box itself looked like it had been dragged behind the truck the last 5 miles to my house. The valve cover gaskets arrived a day later. Not surprisingly, the box was a flimsy piece of junk that in no way was up to the task of keeping the gaskets from being bent. Again, there was zero padding in the box, nor was it marked 'do not bend' or something similar as you would expect for a part like this. And, of course, the box was bent and creased to hell.
Juxtapose this with my part order from Amazon, which came the same day as the hose. Both boxes were on the porch next to one another, and while the RockAuto box looked like it had been through a war zone, the Amazon box was completely unscathed. It was a much sturdier box that was appropriately sized for its contents. Inside, my motorcycle oil filter and the Fumoto drain valve I had ordered for the truck were neatly shrink-wrapped to a sturdy piece of cardboard to ensure they didn't jostle inside the box. And all this was done with free Super Saver shipping. If I had ordered them from RockAuto, they would've shown up in God knows what kind of condition with the insult on injury being that I would've paid for shipping (likely extra since they'd come from separate warehouses. Why that cost is passed on to the customer is beyond me).
Granted, neither of these parts are overly fragile, but it stands to reason that they'll show the same 'care' when packaging something that is susceptible to shipping damage and I don't want to deal with returns when that happens. So, for now, I think I'm shelving RockAuto as a source. They're a great research tool, but I'll stick with Amazon for online shopping and my favorite local brick-and-mortars for everything else.
Mike
