Monday, September 17, 2007

One Thing Leads To Another

Okay, the Sam's story.

About a year ago or so, I bought 4 new Dunlop tires from Sam's. 60k mile warranty, yada yada yada. Good price and road hazard coverage is included free.

Fast forward about a year. While I am on vacation in WV, my wife decided to take my truck in for an alignment (the truck pulls to the right) at Christian Brothers Automotive. When they look at the truck, they notice the tie rod is worn out. This is not surprise because I have noticed a "pop" when I turn let or right. She tells them to replace it (they do good work) and they do an alignment. My wife pulls out and notices the truck is now pulling to the left. She turns around and takes it back to tell them the issue. They put it on the machine and see that it is perfectly aligned. They look at the front tires and notice that the cords are bunching up underneath the tread. The manager tells my wife that the tires are defective and we should see about getting new ones. My wife heads over to Sam's (which is right across the street from CB's) and tells her story. Eventually, the manager agrees to replace the two front tires with new Goodyear Wrangler tires if we pay the difference between the two. Since we had the tires at least a year (maybe two years), I think this is a great idea. The only hitch is that my wife does not want the tech on duty doing the work since he has broken off 3 studs on her van on two separate visits. The manager understands and tells my wife to come back the next day to get them mounted. They are mounted without a problem the very next day.

I am pretty sure I will not buy any more tires from Sam's simply because of the quality of help they hire. They have been very kind on taking care of us with my truck tires and reimbursing us for the stud installs, but that does not compensate us for time and gasoline to get the repairs done. Also, we were told that Sam's had a lot of complaints on the Dunlops tires and thankfully have stopped selling them.

I guess sometimes you get what you pay for.

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