In this world of constant change ...

[Hawkmoon]

... it's refreshing to find that some things remain constant.





Like Firestone tire stores, for example. I recently bought a set of slightly used (80% tread remaining) Firestone Destination tires on factory Jeep alloy rims. The wheels are the right rims for my Cherokee, and I needed tires. But when I put them on, I had a bad shimmy at 55 MPH. Not a surprise -- when I looked, I immediately saw that one of the wheel weights was no longer a wheel weight -- the clip was there, but the weight part had gone AWOL. So I took the two front tires to a nearby Firestone store this morning and asked them to balance them.

The price to balance two wheels was going to be $27 and change. I agreed. 20 minutes later, the "customer service representative" came over and told me they couldn't balance my tires. He said they were all cracked and deteriorated, and that they are more than ten years old. They aren't safe to drive, I need new tires. He quoted me $658 for a full set -- on sale.

The problem is, I was born at night but it wasn't last night. I know sidewalls crack, so that was one of the things I looked for when I bought these tires. They aren't cracked. And I can read the sidewall date codes. They aren't more than ten years old, they're seven years old. And in very good condition.

40 or so years ago my brother was a Firestone store manager. He used to complain back then about their unscrupulous business practices, selling unnecessary work. Apparently nothing has changed. Firestone lies.

Yes, it's good to know there are some things in life we can always count on.

[Ben]

Well, this is just me, and  I wouldn't tell another guy what to do, but...

For myself, of all the things on my vehicles, I see the tires as about the only part that can instantly kill me, so I've always been of the "better safe than sorry" mind.  I don't think I've ever kept tires for more than five years. It's just peace of mind for me to get new tires earlier rather than later, especially with the road trips and stuff I do these days. I'm not sure that you can always see things like sidewall deterioration.

[Hawkmoon]

Well, this is just me, and  I wouldn't tell another guy what to do, but...

For myself, of all the things on my vehicles, I see the tires as about the only part that can instantly kill me, so I've always been of the "better safe than sorry" mind.  I don't think I've ever kept tires for more than five years. It's just peace of mind for me to get new tires earlier rather than later, especially with the road trips and stuff I do these days. I'm not sure that you can always see things like sidewall deterioration.

I'm with you on safe tires, but for most quality brands, seven years is nothing. I have seen Goodyear and Cooper tires that are fifteen or more years old that I would trust completely. On the other hand, I've seen Firestone tires that were less than five years old that I wouldn't drive to the corner store. In this case, though, they specifically told me the tires are cracked (they aren't), and that the tires are more than ten years old (they aren't).

Occum's razor suggests, therefore, that Firestone lied.

[TommyGunn]

You should by Michelin tires.

[Scout26]

My understanding is the rot begins as soon as the tire is made.  Sunlight and Ozone help speed the process, therefore tires more than five years old should be replaced. 

[zahc]

My dad worked for a Firestone store way back in the 70s or 80s. He said they were thoroughly fraudulent and he got a new job as soon as he could. Like, "squirt oil on the shocks with an oil can and tell the customer they need new shocks" level of crooked.

[just Warren]

Back in the old town Had a Goodyear guy try that same crap on me. Never went back.

"You're driving to Oregon on those tires? I sure wouldn't, let me hook you up with these XXXX tires at $$$$ per and you'll be fine."

Mind you we're talking about one of those little 4-cyl Toyota pick-ups and he wanted to sell me high-performance tires. And at one point he put his hand on my shoulder in that "I'm concerned" gesture.

I didn't need to change those tires for another two years after multiple long trips and a heavy work load.

Just recently in the new town my kid takes her car to the local Goodyear and they try to do all manner of things but my wife was there and told them to F off. She knew it was a simple fix but after Goodyear got done "examining" the car turns out there was so much wrong that, frankly, the car shouldn't be able to drive at all.

Went to another place, turns out, amazingly, it was a simple and quick fix.

[Hawkmoon]

I never allow shops to use their impact guns on my lug nuts. Mine are the type that have a thin, stainless steel shell crimped over a plain steel nut, and a few whacks with the burp gun knocks the stainless caps loose. I have a 29 year old Jeep Cherokee (different vehicle than the one in this story) that still has 19 of the original 20 lug nuts intact. Everyone in two Jeep clubs asks how I did that. Easy -- I only use manual tools to remove and install the lug nuts.

So when I took the two front tires in for balancing, I removed them at home and put them in the back. The "customer service representative" came out with me to look at the tires. I opened the rear hatch and there, right in front of him, were two Firestone Destination LE tires -- with outline white letters, mind you -- FIRESTONE DESTINATION LE -- staring him in the face. I knew I was in trouble when he immediately started running his hands over the tread on the bolted in spare -- which is a Goodyear Wrangler.

Like, "Yeah, check that one out, would you? While you're doing that one, I'll run these two Firestones to the Goodyear dealer up the road."

Sheesh.

[MikeB]

I had a dealership try crap like this while they were supposed to be fixing some recall thing that should have taken less than an hour. After waiting almost 4 hours and seeing the people that were supposed to working on my Jeep go to lunch I started bitching. Finally someone comes to me with a list of stuff they have to fix or the vehicle wouldn't be safe. BS. I told them they better just get the recall issue fixed and my car off the lift right now or I'd be pursuing some legal action.

Even dumber of this dealership, while they were spending all that time trying to find stuff that "had" to be fixed on my Jeep to try and generate a few hundred extra dollars of repair work, not one salesperson came to talk to me about the Challenger I was walking around and around and around. I think if someone had actually said want to take a test drive I might have been driving home a new Challenger; I was even starting to think about trying to find a salesperson; then of course I found out what they were doing with my Jeep and had no interest in doing any additional business with them.

[dogmush]

My last visit to a Firestone dealer was several years ago.  A coworker of mine called me close to tears to say that the store had taken the wheels off her car and was refusing to reassemble her car until she paid for ~$600 worth of repairs to "make it safe for the road".

I drove to the store and went full R. Lee Ermey* on them until they called the cops, and when the cops showed up I was calm and rational and told the officers that my friend wanted to press charges for theft due to the shops refusal to return her car.  I had printouts of FL's law pertaining to estimates, as well s the signed estimate for $99 worth of work.  I also pointed out where the manager had lied in writing, and said ATF (from somewhere) was diff fluid from my coworker's car.  Dude started looking *very* worried when i mentioned you could tell from the smell it wasn't gear oil, and suggested we all go together and get some fluid from her car.

No one got arrested :(, but my coworker did get her alignment for free.

*I actually got to use the phrase "it looks like the best part of you ran down the crack of your mom's ass and ended up a brown stain on the mattress".  I guessed correctly that the mid 20's "manager" had never seen Full Metal Jacket.

Moral of the story: those "brand" shops are hives of scum and villainy.  Don't get me started on the "Just Brakes" franchises.

[HeroHog]

My $0.02 USD, I worked for a GoodYear Service Center here in Shreveport as a Mechanic/Alignment Technician and must say that the management there would NOT put up and discouraged ANY even SLIGHTLY underhanded "diagnosing" by their mechanics. Hell, they were the ones who paid for my ASE Certification.

[Hawkmoon]

It could well be that it's Firestone.

Then again, a decade or more after leaving Firestone my brother was service manager for a BMW dealership. One of his biggest headaches there was getting the "technicians" (when I was first driving they were still called "mechanics") to do the repair the customer brought the car in for.  The BMW (and I guess many other shops) model was for techs to be paid not only for flat rate hours (meaning a good tech could easily log 60 to 70 hours of "work" in a 40-hour week), but also to get a percentage of any additional work they could sell. So when a car came in, instead of doing the repair, the first thing they would do was waste a half hour looking for anything else they could sell. And then they'd get pissed off if the service writer didn't push the customer aggressively enough to have the extra work done.

[K Frame]

Years ago...

Actually, it was the evening of the Quayle/Stockdale/Gore debate in which Stockdale said his hearing aide was off...

Some little *expletive deleted*it at NTB tried to sell my fiancee a set of top of the line tires with the top speed rating for her "Mustang." At about $350 a goddamned tire.

I think he was pushing Vs or something like that, for something like 150 mph sustained.

This was a 6 cylinder 1986 Ford Mustang, thoroughly gelded. I seriously doubt that the damned thing would have done 150 even if pushed off a cliff. Hell, I think the speedo topped out at 140.

She had these great big stars in her eyes with SPORTS CAR! IT'S MY SPORTS CAR! firmly stamped on them. The fastest she had ever had the damned thing was about 90 mph, and likely the fastest sustained was about 80.

The kid kept pushing until I finally told him to STFU and she and I discussed it for quite some time before she finally saw reason in NOT spending that freaking much money on a set of tires when she was living in Washington, DC.

She finally chose a set of U-rated tires, which turned out to be a very good set of tires with good road handling and durability. And at a bit less than half the price of what that little *expletive deleted*ck was pushing.

She went back with the service writer and the little puke ass sales *expletive deleted*it made a snide comment to me. I got in his face pretty hard and complained to his manager about his attitude. I'm pretty sure that went nowhere, because NTB was also well known for pulling crap like Firestone. I'm really surprised that they didn't try to come out and say that "When we put your car up on the lift we found that your framzit denoobulator is leaking rotolian fluid! And it corroded the Zyplaxadol Module! The car is in imminent danger of exploding! By law, we have to fix it... for $2,500."

I've have gone all Godzilla through Tokyo had they tried that *expletive deleted*it.