I would say that you have other choices other then the house brand. Every thing in auto zone says duralast. Where as orileys you can get ac deco, Borg warner, or even the house brand. I've put the duralast gold pads on my car and ce put the orileys house brand and the duralast squealed and howled and wore down faster. Ask most car people and not dead horse people and the majority will not use autozone. It may be my personal experiences but if I go into autozone with a part number in hand I still have to tell them make and model and argue that my car does in fact have that on there.
No need to get condescending tones on me either. I made a statement at a company why to avoid and it has been backed up by several people here about going elsewhere for parts, I even back up the culture that store breeds.
You can insert any brand company you want, it just so happens autozone was the one brought up. You can get other brands other than dura last from auto zone, I've picked up ford motorsports filters at autozone. I prefer O'Reilly's, but I've met dummies and ive met knowledgable people at all different brand stores. I'm just saying you qualifying autozone as a bad company by working as a parts guy for two weeks doesn't say much.
I'm not taking any of this from deadhorse, I hardly get on there anymore. But I see it all the time, ppl wanna go straight to the part blaming it instead of thinking that their car is the problem.