Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill
Goodyear tires are indeed warranteed. But here is a sad note, based on my own experiences. There are two kinds of Goodyear stores. One is a factory store. The other is a franchise. When you drive up to one, I have no idea how you tell which one you are entering. However, the factory store is pretty good about warranty reimbursement, and the franchise store will fight you to the death before issuing a credit. One of my failure was in Iowa City, Iowa. The factory store measured the remaining tread depth and immediately gave me 90% off the cost of a new tire. Another failure was in Tucson, AZ. The problem here was a manufacturiong defect in a steel belt. The factory store examined the failure, measured the tread depth, and immediately gave me 80% off the cost. The third was in Pierre, South Dakota. This was a franchise store. The owner explained a couple things to me. First, since the failure was a thrown tread, and I hadn't retrieved any of the tread hunks off the road, he couldn't measure tread depth, and so he couldn't issue a credit. And second, he could ship the carcass of the tire back to the factory and let them decide if there should be a credit. If the factory decided "YES", then everyone is happy. But if the factory decided "NO", they would ship the carcass back to him for disposal, and I would have to pay shipping charges both ways. Now that just plain sucks, doesn't it? Moral? If you can, try to find a factory store. Ask the manager which one he is running.
Bill
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Bill, the owner of the franchise store was honest with you. The following is an example of the adjustment procedure from the manufacturer.
1. You bring a tire that may be eligible for an adjustment to me.
2. After giving it an initial inspection and deciding it is adjustable, I go to a pro-rate chart and use the manufacturers calculations on how much adjustment to give, based on the amount of usable tread depth left. I got to have the tread to calculate this. Also, the manufacturer's adjustment figure will not include mounting, balancing, taxes, or disposal fees. We are supposed to collect all of this from the customer.....or just eat it, which is a big loss if we do.
3. Some manufacturers will require the adjusted tire to be shipped back to them for factory analysis, or may send a rep by our shop to do it on the spot. Either way, if for some reason they decide that we erred in adjusting the tire, then we're out everything we gave for credit.....and any mounting, balancing, etc. we gave. They may also come up with a different pro-rata percentage if they do accept our adjustment.
4. If they do decide that we were correct in adjusting the tire, then they give us a credit towards our next purchase of tires from them. They don't give us any money back, even though we are out the money we spent in buying the tire we used for adjustment. They also don't give us the pro-rated adjustment price of the retail price, which we did for the customer..but instead give us a credit based off of wholesale price. (Ex:we adjust a tire at 70% of a $100 dollar retail tire....so the customer pays only $30. If we had to pay $80 for the tire originally, the manufacturer credits us 70% of this wholesale price, which is $56).
So, I got $56 credit and $30 from the customer for a total of $86 on a tire I normally get $100. I made a whole $6 on this and had to do more paperwork, invest more time, and take a risk that the manufacturer would even accept my adjustment.....not counting the money I payed out for mounting, balancing, etc. (if I didn't charge the customer for it).
5. If I had to ship the tire to the manufacturer, and they deny my claim, I'm also backcharged the cost of shipping.....along with all the other losses I have.
I hope this helps everyone understand why a regular store owner doesn't profit, but actually loses from adjusting tires. If you bought the tire from him originally, then he has a little cushion from the profit he made originally to help. However, when you just drive up from out of town, and will never buy anything from him again......he is going to be resistant to lose money just to help you out.
So, what am I saying? The same thing you did. You will be much better off to find a company owned store for adjustment purposes. This way, the manufacturer of the defective tire, can absorb the loss on their product. However, not all tire manufacturers have company owned retail outlets.