A word of warning about NAPA, based on personal experience.
I, too, had been under the impression that NAPA was "a cut above" the other parts stores in terms of supposed parts quality, but my recent experience convinced me otherwise.
I needed an oil filter and went online to the official napa site, found the filter I wanted, and ordered it for store pickup at the nearby Napa store, payment due at pickup. When I checked out online I used a discount coupon.
When I went to pick up the filter I hit a couple of issues that in retrospect were red flags. First the guy at the counter wouldn't honor my coupon. He said that "it didn't show in his system". I told him I ordered on the official Napa website and showed him the screenshot from the checkout screen. Still he kept insisting that he wasn't going to honor it, telling me "look I'm an independent" - that was the first red flag. I let the coupon thing go and paid. He slid the filter across the counter and right away I noticed that it was a "Made in Venezuela" Napa "gold" filter, not the made in USA version. Second red flag. I told him I didn't want a "Made in Venezuela" part and asked him to take it back. He got pretty annoyed and refused until I threaten to file a credit card dispute. On the way out he told me "don't bother coming back here" - don't worry I won't.
This annoyed me enough to make me google Napa's ownership model. Lo and behold:
- Napa brand is owned by a company called Genuine Parts Corporation which is publicly traded as GPC
- GPC has a small number of company owned stores but the majority of stores are independently owned. The one I went to, which goes by the name "Bad Monster Dublin Napa" is one of those.
- It isn't really a franchise model as Napa takes pains to say on its own website, as the independents don't pay a traditional franchise fee to carry the Napa name.
- I guess they are supposed to use Napa's order and inventory management system but they seem free to get parts from wherever, which would explain the "Made in Venezuela" Napa oil filter.
If I am shopping in person, I've gone back to a small local chain in the area, Monument, who incidentally were (by their own telling one of) the first to carry Redline and have some sort of legacy preferred pricing arrangement.