Car battery recommendation?

[Dee18]

My 27 year old has a 19 year old Honda Accord (in great shape at 150,000 miles) that hasn’t been driven for about 7 weeks because she was out of town. It has been parked in the open in extremely hot weather.   The two places I  would recommend to her are closed on Sunday.  Open near her are Walmart, Pep Boys, Auto Zone…and other chain store.  Does anyone have a rec for a place that will be honest whether she actually needs a new battery and, if so, will sell her a decent battery at a fair price?

[neo von retorch]

It might really vary slightly by location, but the chains like Auto Zone and Advance Auto Parts would always bring a tester out to the car. It recharges the battery and tests voltage and maybe can tell if it's running down or holding the charge. So there's no human guesswork really, beyond maybe interpreting the numbers one way or another. But in my experience the staff at these locations generally like helping out someone who has brought their car to them. (Obviously that can vary, and you could get someone that hates their job, or a money-hungry franchise owner, though they probably don't work the front lines.)

[uniwelder]

Just because the battery drained while sitting for almost 2 months, doesn't mean she needs a new battery.  I know Auto Zone will check, for free, the battery strength and whether the alternator is functioning.  There will also be a date (probably on the side, either a sticker or etched into the plastic) on the battery that tells you the month and year the battery was manufactured.  If its over 5 years old, you might want a new battery.

Did she get it jump started?  If yes, the first thing would be to drive it around for a while, maybe an hour, to let the battery recharge from the alternator.  Letting it sit with the engine idling won't make the alternator spin fast enough to create enough voltage to charge the battery, hence driving it. 

[Dee18]

Thanks!  I’ll tell her to go to AutoZone which is only a mile away.

[franklin4]

If there's a Costco nearby they sell batteries at good prices. I just bought one today, was on the way to O'Reilly when I remembered I could get one at Costco so revised course.

[JerusalemCricket]

Not OP but I bought a new car battery from AutoZone yesterday after the old one stopped working. The staff tested it and told us it wouldn't hold a charge.

It was between a TotalPro battery with a 1-year warranty or a Duralast Gold battery with a 3-year warranty. I couldn't remember what I did last time, went with the cheaper one because warranties are usually a scam. Now I'm reading and it seems like there's disagreement online whether battery brand matters. Did I screw up - should I have gone for the 3-year one?

[Dee18]

OP here.Autozone honored the warranty with no hassle at all so you should be fine.