Morning Tire Shop Rant

I've always had good service with America's Tire. I've had issues a time or two, but they've always sorted them out and made right.

I refuse to use Big O or Les Scwab. I took my mom's Z into Big O and they forgot to tighten the lug nuts and the back wheel came off. Les Scabs, well the tried to bone me on a warranty issue and then they boned me again damaging all for of my wheels. They paid to fix them, but what a shit show.

 

Sorry OP.
Sounds like a headache for something that should be a simple job.

 

Sucks man sorry. Super frustrating. I have the same luck with tires and alignment, my ocd doesn’t help.

 

Never seen that in my life, must have been a shop full of incompetents.

 

Having been in the business, pride in ones work and good shops are getting harder to find. So when I find one, I don't mind spending more for their work. I don't shop for the "best deal".

 

Sorry to hear of your bad experience. I used to work in a tire shop years ago. It isn't a terribly difficult job mounting and balancing tires but some shops do hire people that clearly are not interested. A few people I worked with were brutal. One day the acting shop foreman did a tire change on a truck outside with floor jacks, pretty standard, straight forward job. Swap everything, customer leaves, we carry on with our day. 2 hours later, the customer calls pissed right off that the shop foreman had jacked his truck up by the oil pan! Crushing it in the process. The customer went home to change his oil and found it!
Your issue will either be poor workmanship or failed parts. I hope they correct the issue in a timely manner.

 

I use tire rack and always have them shipped to my house. Then i use tire racks website to find the cheapest installer. Never had much of an issue outside of having to fight a little today with the installer to get me the correct mounting price.

As for discount tire. I tried their price matching online. They never responded to my multiple submissions. The missed out on a sale

 

Tire Rack finally caved into free shipping. I stopped buying stuff for years from them because the shipping made them non competitive on price. I got my BFG bro tires from them last spring

 

Totally agree, I have been a mechanic for almost 20 years now, and for the last 7 going on 8 I have been a heavy duty repairman working for a large contractor in a field truck. I take pride in everything I do, rebuilding a C15 in the middle of a job site with equipment rolling all around me, or welding some small bracket together in my garage. Like my hardhat says "good work isn't cheap, cheap work isn't good"

 

Damn, you have some really bad luck with tire purchases. Mine has always been straight forward, except one time at Discount tires, I wanted Michelin Pilot Super Sports on my Lexus and they ended up ordering and installing Michelin Pilot Sports.

 

Been using Discount Tire for over 10 years across 5 vehicles, never had any issues. Had three tires replaced in two days last summer because my wife's civic found every bolt and screw laying on the road in Arizona. They replaced the warranty tires, zero problems.

The price matching I've done was in store, also an easy experience.

I'm going to check out Tire Rack, though.

 

They used to not charge sales tax which offset the shipping. Now the free shipping offsets the tax. Still prefer it to going to or calling tire shops

 

I think this is a little more towards the extreme end of fuckery but I can say that the number of times I have left a tire shop properly balanced, inflated, installed is rare. Chewed up lugs, 4 unbalanced tires, not aligning the paint mark, etc... in usually the norm.

 

On my bmw I would order tires and have them installed by a tuner shop. That way it guaranteed no damage to my rims or tires or car. My wife would have me bring her bmw to wheel works and they’d always fuck something up. I got to the point where I’d just sit in the back and watch them. I caught them damaging her rims (which they paid for) and I stopped a huge fuck up. The tech was lifting the car by the side skirts and not the frame. Car would of been destroyed if I hadn’t stopped them that time.

I’ve learned that ordering online and finding an independent shop that takes pride in their work is the best route to go.

 

I replace my tires yearly (stock dunlops that came with my taco) right before winter
cost $490 before $75 gift card with install
discount tire co (also americas tire co in some places)
Ive utilized them for tires for over 15 years & countless autos
best price, no issues...bing bang boom

I ordered tires 2 weeks ago over the phone & schdl a install date for dec 13th
(the discount tire Im using is 120 miles away from me, so I like to plan ahead)
they called me not once, but twice, confirm my tires had arrived in the store & to firm up my install date

I am 100% confident that on dec 13th I will have new tires on my taco within an hour of the start time
(its like filling up gas for these guys) easy breazy
side note- I have never had an alignment adjustment (343k miles on mine)

 

I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve picked up a vehicle from any service, tire shop or otherwise, where nothing was screwed up.

At my last tire change, the shop swapped out one of my perfectly-fine metal TPMS valve stems (stock) for a rubber one. Why? Who knows. They fixed their mistake, of course. Also, I discovered the next day two of the other valve cores had not been tightened fully and I was leaking air. For once those tiny O-rings in the valve cap saved me. I tightened the cores myself to fix.

I also don’t understand why the big shops insist on “rebuilding” TPMS sensors every time they have the wheel off. It’s not necessary.

 

Big Oh No is ridiculous, Les Swabs you, don't even get me started. Bad brake job(seized caliper) new strut failure, 60K warranty tires that lasted 25K( screwed on the warranty), bad valve stems, wheels torqued about 30 lbs over, flat repairs gone bad.... and not just one shop, about four separate dealerships. They're an absolute joke. These days, I just use for flat repair cuz they are the closest shop, and even that is a crap shoot.

 

Guess I'm lucky the local America tire does a good job, they even torque stuff properly. Walmart just used the ugga-dugga and I needed a breaker bar to get em off my silverado

 

Sorry, OP. That's some shit luck. I would suggest however, that you keep in mind the old adage. "You get what you pay for". Sometimes when you shop around for the lowest price, you also get the lowest customer service.

Hope you get all of that sorted out.

 

Dam thats Ffing BRUTAL. Sorry OP. Put new tires on a few months back and alignment everything was fine except they marked all 4 of my rims....WTF!!!