Tire Discounters
I’ve done some research that I think might be interesting to friends or anybody who finds this page from a Google search. First I will give some background and then I will explain my research.
I first discovered Tire Discounters when I was seeking nitrogen for my tires. I called them up and was told that nitrogen was $4.95/tire. I wanted to try it out so I was going to go ahead and pay the money so I went in there and the guy told me it was free. They got lucky that time because right after he told me it was free, I told him about the patch I also needed. That was just the beginning of my saga with Tire Discounters. I went in there with the truck the next week to get the nitrogen in it as well. The manager greeted me and told me that it would cost $4.95/tire. I told him that wasn’t going to happen because I got it free the week before. He looked in his system and told me it was because I got something else done. Well, as I just mentioned, I didn’t ask for the other service until I had already received the quote of free. Over time, I went in to that same location to get my tires topped off and I also had some other minor things done (rotation, balance, I forget). Each time I felt like the manager was trying to rip me off. The other employees were very helpful. Once they scratched my wheel and, when I pointed it out, they were very honorable about making it right. Note that anytime you go to a big chain shop like that you need to take very careful inventory of scratches.
I ended up going to another location one time and the manager there took care of me for free so I asked him what the deal with the shiftiness was. He told me that they can do it for free with no problem but the only time he wouldn’t was if someone came in with brand new tires from somewhere else. I could respect that attitude.
Finally, we took Tiffany’s car in to another one of the locations and that is where it got really shifty. The manager tried to tell me that it cost $5/tire (if I remember correctly) but then when he found out we needed two valve stems as well, he ended up saying that it would be $15 for the valve stems and he would inflate the tires for free. I felt like he was being less than ethical in his pricing so that is what led me to do my research.
I called every Dayton and Columbus location and 6 Cincinnati locations. I only called each once, because I was worried I would ruin the experiment if they were suspicious. When I called I always asked about inflation first because I didn’t want them to “throw it in” with another service, and then I asked about the price of replacing a single valve stem.
The most important thing that I found was that if you call that last location, you can get a quote of $0 for the inflation and $5 per valve stem. This basically shows that the manager got a happy medium out of us between the normal price and the price he had originally tried to get. I have since concluded that the managers are like used car salesmen and they try to figure out how much they can get you for before you even come up to the counter.
Here are the results:
Note that the prices for inflation ranged from $0 to $7 and the prices for a valve stem ranged from $0 to $18.95!
The moral of the story is that you should always be careful when dealing with used-car dealers turned tire salesmen. Tire Discounters has decent products. They even have pretty good deals on tires with lifetime maintenance. They should let those things sell themselves and not spend all of their time trying to rip people off on nitrogen. If they keep me happy by keeping my nitrogen filled, they will have a customer for life. But if they continue the shiftiness, nitrogen is all I’ll use them for.
December 1st, 2007 at 11:29 pm
It would not be fair if I didn’t tell you about my very pleasant experience at Tire Discounters last week.
Since my car has been in storage, the tires needed topped off when I was home last week for Thanksgiving. I brought it in and told them I already had the nitrogen (not dealing with any managers). I was helped by a very friendly guy who I had an interesting conversation about cars with.