Replacing support struts for hood & rear hatch

[Bolderboulder]

This may not be the place for this rant, so please forgive me.
Both sets of struts; hood & rear hatch, on my 05 failed at the same time a couple of days ago. Go figure.
Rockauto's shipping time to me was about 3 days. The FSA struts I found there were $20 each with lifetime warranty. Not bad. But needing to replace them urgently, I called the Toyota stealership for their availability. They were in stock. The parts guy then tells me the hood strut is $167.55 each. I thought I misheard and asked him to repeat, please. $167.55. I asked him how can he justify that price, and there was silence.
I thought I hated stealerships as much as possible, but that experience greatly deepened that loathing.
I ordered from Rockauto and they arrived in 1.5 days; a day early. Rockauto rocks.
That's all I have. Thanks for listening.

 

[Ralph Blake]

This may not be the place for this rant, so please forgive me.
Both sets of struts; hood & rear hatch, on my 05 failed at the same time a couple of days ago. Go figure.
Rockauto's shipping time to me was about 3 days. The FSA struts I found there were $20 each with lifetime warranty. Not bad. But needing to replace them urgently, I called the Toyota stealership for their availability. They were in stock. The parts guy then tells me the hood strut is $167.55 each. I thought I misheard and asked him to repeat, please. $167.55. I asked him how can he justify that price, and there was silence.
I thought I hated stealerships as much as possible, but that experience greatly deepened that loathing.
I ordered from Rockauto and they arrived in 1.5 days; a day early. Rockauto rocks.
That's all I have. Thanks for listening.

The Toyota Dealer Stealer's are there to take as much money as they can from Toyota owners, stay as far as one can from them. Rock Auto and many others have parts that work as good and better.

 

[dfontes]

This may not be the place for this rant, so please forgive me.
Both sets of struts; hood & rear hatch, on my 05 failed at the same time a couple of days ago. Go figure.
Rockauto's shipping time to me was about 3 days. The FSA struts I found there were $20 each with lifetime warranty. Not bad. But needing to replace them urgently, I called the Toyota stealership for their availability. They were in stock. The parts guy then tells me the hood strut is $167.55 each. I thought I misheard and asked him to repeat, please. $167.55. I asked him how can he justify that price, and there was silence.
I thought I hated stealerships as much as possible, but that experience greatly deepened that loathing.
I ordered from Rockauto and they arrived in 1.5 days; a day early. Rockauto rocks.
That's all I have. Thanks for listening.

I buy most of my OEM parts from Partsouq, Amayama, and Megazip.net. You can get genuine OEM parts for a bit less than what the stealership will charge.

I read lots of reviews on aftermarket hood struts and many people say they are hit or miss and need to be replaced within 3 years. For a bit more, I'm going with the OEM struts since the originals lasted almost 20 years.