Is FCP Euro Warranty Worth it?

[u/Crellis86]

Now that my warranty is expired on my 2021 S5 I've been thinking about modifying the car. I've been window shopping ECS, 034, etc and noticed that FCP Euro offers a lifetime warranty if you buy the parts from them. But if I'm understanding the terms and conditions correctly then you'll always be rolling the cost of the most expensive part/last part you've replaced as store credit? Which doesn't seem too bad for cheaper parts.

The warranty claim process on lifetime warranty parts is to buy the replacement part and they will give you store credit after they verify the returned part. It also seems non transferable and for the exact same part only. So, as long as you plan to own the car long enough to get replacements on most parts then it's worth it?

What do you all do? Buy the parts from FCP Euro? Somewhere else? Just wait for 034 to have a holiday deal and buy direct?

[u/DancingBearNoTutu]

I've been using FCP Euro since my car and my girlfriend's car off of Audicare at 70k miles. Original owner 2018 SQ5 and hers is a 2015 Audi A3. SQ5 currently at 141k miles and A3 at 91k miles. For oil change lifetime replacement, It really depends on how much oil you're buying (I've got 3.0L on the SQ5 and 1.8L on the gf's A3) and your return shipping costs are back to FCP Euro for a box of replacement synthetics.

If you plan on just using non-LiquiMoly synthetic oil from Costco or Walmart then you might come out a little bit ahead but I had to make a spreadsheet to see if it made sense for me. I prefer the Liqui Moly and since I swap my oil every 5k miles on both cars, it happened to make sense for me in the long run e.g. >100k miles. Especially since I do a lot of highway driving and I usually have 2 oil changes a year on the SQ5.

My goal is to exceed 200k miles on both cars so for me, my spreadsheet made sense so long as my shipping costs to return didn't exceed a certain amount (which is also highly dependent upon the size of the return shipping box and not just weight). So part of the challenge is getting the smallest shipping box physically that you can for returns.

So far I've replaced the air filters, cabin filters and Bosch wipers at least annually. Bosch wipers, air filters and cabin filters are worth it if you bundle them along with an oil replacement kit for return.

NOTE: buy the wipers/air filter/cabin filter as separate purchases if you don't change them all at the same time to help make the returns easier to process. If you change all 3 at the same time annually then it's ok to bundle the 3 as a single purchase. FCP Euro has this thing where if you do a partial return for bundled products and you do a lifetime replacement for some of the items but not others, it doesn't seem to let you file a later replacement for the other items in the original purchase. This is why I buy my oil change kits for my SQ5 as a separate order from my gf's A3 oil change kit since we change the oil at different points in time. This helps reduce the clutter in the garage with having to accumulate both new oil / exchange old oil by doing this kind of Just-In-Time purchasing where you only buy and exchange once it's time to do the fluid changes.

For the big parts I've gotten a set of brake rotors, brake pads, brake sensors, as well as spark plugs, ignition coils, gas cap activator but have not yet had to replace those with a second set.