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Update: That cheap brake pad set i grabbed failed on my way to Tacoma last Tuesday
I was cruising down I-5 near the Fife exit when my pedal went almost to the floor. Pulled off at a gas station and my front rotors had deep grooves and the pads were basically crumbling. Turns out the brand I bought online had a bad batch of bonding material. Had to get a tow to my buddy's shop and drop $380 on a full rotor and pad swap. Anyone else get burned by counterfeit or fake parts from sketchy sites lately?
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the_tessa8d ago
@gavinlopez That wiper blade melting thing sounds insane, what brand was that? But back to your brake pads-did you actually check if the website had any kind of authentication or contact info before you bought? Because I almost fell for a site that was just a direct copy of a known parts distributor, even the font and layout were identical, and the only way I caught it was the URL had an extra letter.
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the_tessa8d ago
Wait, did anyone check if that site was actually a legitimate business or just a drop shipper running a fake storefront? A lot of those cheap parts come from unbranded factories that change their materials without warning, and by the time you find a bad batch the seller is already gone. Try searching the business address or phone number on Google Maps next time, half the time it ends up being a residential house or a P.O. box in another state. Some of these scammers even steal actual tracking numbers from real orders to make it look like packages are moving. The bonding agent in those pads is probably the same stuff they use for crafting glue, not brake components.
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