Tire-Buying Strategies -- Edmunds.com

Edmunds.com

Tire-Buying Strategies -- Edmunds.com

Tire buying is a minefield of hidden extras. Save yourself agony and money by combining Internet savvy with good old-fashioned legwork.

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capriracer

One thing left out of the article is that if you buy tires on-line, the guy who mounts them has no vested interest in your satisfaction. If there is a problem, then you have to deal with whoever you bought the tires from (or the manufacturer), and the guys who mounted the tires will not help you. Sometimes people think the tire is the problem when it is the mounting (and balancing).

The way to avoid this is to buy tires at the local shop. That guy can not escape his responsibility in the transaction.

PF_Flyer

I'm fortunate enough to have a friend who runs a family-owned local shop, and you're right on point capriracer. He'll definitely mount, balance, rotate for you, but if you bought somewhere else and simply had him mount them, any warranty issues are the responsibility of the seller of the tires.

Since he also rotates tires he sells for free (and I rotate religiously), any savings I might get by buying online are a wash with what I'd have to pay him to rotate "out of shop tires".

Yes, some folks want tires from a manufacturer that he doesn't stock - can't please everyone - and you'll occasionally see someone come into the shop with tires to be mounted. He's perfectly fine with that and gives those customers the same quality of service. He has a vested interest in the work he does for them, but if a defect shows up in the tire that the manufacturer would cover, he's not the channel the customer has to use to deal with that.

capriracer

It is my understanding that any tire dealer can get pretty much any brand of tire if he contacts the right distributor. So the idea that a given shop can only sell certain brands is basically a myth.

Now I'll tell my favorite story on the subject of using local tire shops.

I worked in the warranty department for a major tire manufacturer. One day I got a call from a consumer who had bought a set of large off-roading tires from an on-line 4X4 shop. He took the tires to a local tire shop to mount and balance.

After a few days he found the tire had lost pressure, so he took the tire and wheel back to the mounting dealer to complain about the seal to the rim. The mounting dealer said it was a pin hole from the factory and he should call the manufacturer - that would be me! I directed him to one of our dealers in his area - and because that dealer didn't sell him the tire, they wouldn't even look at it!

Instead of calling me back to find another dealer, the consumer decided to call the selling dealer (the on-line 4X4 shop), and that guy sent him another tire, and returned the tire to us. We looked at it: Mounting damage!

It took the consumer about 10 days to get the thing fixed - and it would all have been avoided if the consumer had started off with the local dealer.