Starter finally crapped out a couple days ago. Took it out this morning and took it to the local AA. I had purchased an AA reman starter back in 2004 or 2005, but then I was living in another city. I couldn't remember if I had a lifetime warranty or not.
Seems that AA stores aren't linked to each other, so they can't pull up your purchase records even if they were made at another store. They have to call the store where the part was purchased.
THEN AA only keeps FULL details on your purchase for about three years. They can see that you bought something, but they can't see details. Amazing.
Anyway, the rep talked to the manager who approved the replacement without hesitation.
Bottom line, if you made a purchase with a lifetime warranty from AA, no matter how long ago it's been, KEEP YOUR RECEIPTS!!

Similar goes for Autozone. Sometimes they have good records between stores but after a while they too purge the old history. I keep any major repairs in a spreadsheet with dates to help too.

I was lucky with Autozone the week before. I had bought brakes for my wife's vehicle about two years back (again while living in a different city). He was able to pull up my name, found the purchase and BAM!! free brakes!! I guess I got spoiled by that. It would make sense to me that in this day and age stores could talk to each other and have a central database that all stores could access. Oh well. To be honest, I have tried doing spreadsheets as well, but I always get sidetracked and never update it, so I stopped.

I'm not sure about autozone, but AA automatically deletes anything over 2years old out of the system unless its a warranty. What is strange is that some things just dissapear out of the system anyway. So without your receipt you are screwed.