Done with them. 4 out of 5 transactions were problematic
Written: Jul 05 '06 (Updated Jul 08 '06)
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I have bought 4 sets of tires and one set of wheels there. After continual minor problems and one major one, I have to give up on them.
Tirerack has an excellent rating/review system for the tires. But importantly, none for themselves. They also have a nice selection and the ability to browse it online to choose the right tire. Unfortunately, many of the tires they show as right for your car are actually not. So they have to have a human there check it against their specs to see if it will fit your car's needs. My problem occured because of the human interaction. This is exactly why I was trying to avoid the usual tire shops! Today many of them hire unskilled people instead of experienced tire techs. They are rough on wheels, have poor installation skills, and make you want to go buy a tire installing machine and do it yourself sometimes.
Do yourself a favor and check Tirerack's return/warranty policy before buying. You take a risk if a wheel or tire is defective, since their terms are so onerous that you pay for their errors. Did you know that if you open a set of 4 tires that are strapped together, you have to ship each tire back to them seperately if there is a problem and you break the original packing straps? They will not accept you taping them or otherwise attaching them to save shipping costs. And this is at your expense! They apparently only accept original packaging. Read their terms on their website. They may well decide to conceed more generous terms to you, but they are only bound by their written terms and the attitude I got from their CSR gave me the impression they have a "screw you if you don't like it" attitude.
Also, their terms state that they will not accept back any wheel that is defective if you have mounted a tire to it. How do you know a wheel is out of round if you don't put a tire on it and drive it? Not every flaw is obviously visable. Again, it's there in black/white on their own web page.
Suspect an item is damaged in shipping? Well, guess who they use to inspect the item for damage? The shipper! You think he's going to just come out and say he ruined a $2,000 set of wheels and pay up? You have to ship the damaged item back at your expense and if they disagree with your assesment of damage, you are now out shipping charges both ways and have to pay them again to ship you back your own wheel or tire. You're basically trusting them to be honest. Well, I had a recent experience with them that showed me not all of their reps are honest or willing to admit errors.
Want to refuse a shipment because it is obviously a damaged package? Their terms state that if sent fedex or UPS they will charge you shipping both ways if you refuse the package. You can't win there.
Suspect damage and want to call to get a Return authorization? Better hope it's during business hours or you can be on the hook for shipping charges if you refuse the shipment. Big ones. It's your word vs the shippers vs Tire Racks. Many buyers like myself have played Russian roulete with this. Some here have been burned. I'm getting out before I lose.
Want to return an item because it's not what they promised? They don't refund shipping and you pay to return it. Defective part? The burden is on you to prove it. And they get to be judge and jury on that. They even have the gall to specifically exclude 'any implied warranty of merchantibility" on any of their items. I'm not sure that's not even a violation of the unified commerical code!
Get a bad tire that you had installed locally? Tough. They will "assist" you in a warranty claim, but won't promise to replace it. You wind up paying to ship it back and then to have a replacement tire remounted on your wheel. They "can" pay for the remounting but their terms do not require it. It basically costs you $40 or more to have the warranty honored, since the local tire installer cannot honor it, not having sold it to you. Do you feel lucky enough to spend $20 or more to ship a tire back, then have them decide your impression of the defect is wrong? Then you're out your tire and the money, since the tire is defective.
Don't think the wheel/tire combo they sold you is as high quality or attractive as what they pictured/described online and want to return it? Go ahead, you'll pay the shipping costs back and also a $60 demounting fee.
I've had (few) of these issues come up, but it just shows their "screw you" attitude. Everything's all fine till a problem occurs, then they don't want to spend a penny to fix their mistakes. In their eyes, they've never made a mistake. Unless you can somehow prove it. Part of running an online sales business is realizing that if you are asking customers to buy sight-unseen, you should expect to cover some of the costs when things go wrong.
On one set of tires, they sold me a set that were not correct for my model, the load rating was barely too small. The tires ran fine, but when I tried to order two replacements for the worn fronts that were getting noisy(fwd car) they refused to sell me 2 replacement tires after finding their error. Fine enough, but what about the two good tires (50% tread left roughly) I have left that they now tell me are unsafe? No modest pro-rata refund offered, no fault admitted, and a rude CSR to boot. He actually hung up on me when I canceled the order and was about to suggest a compromise solution. I just wanted enough to cover the mounting costs of two new tires, but he didn't stick around long enough to hear my offer.
I ordered another wheel/tire setup and one tire was found to be out of round by too much to be balanced by a certified tech at a goodyear shop doing the install on my car. The shop I took it to said it should never have left their warehouse it was in such bad shape. He printed out the specs for us from the machine and it was out of the normal range. Because of their warranty policy costing me almost as much as the tire, and knowing I risked having tirerack disagree and not warranty my tire, thereby losing the tire and the shipping costs, I just put it on the back of the car where it didn't cause vibration and lived with the inability to rotate my tires. I didn't even complain. I mentioned this problem to the CSR in my recent call and got.....no response. No apology. Nothing. Just an accusation that I had somehow ordered the wrong tires.
The CSR also apparently knew little about cars and tires. He tried to claim my smallish car weighed 4100 lbs when that was really the Gross Vehicle Weight rating, which is the max allowable weight of the car with passengers and luggage. When I pointed out his error, he got huffy and said I insulted him. He again ignored my problem and I could tell he wasn't interested in coming to any compromise. He basically dared me to complain to his superiors, so perhaps they don't care about the customers either and he knows that. I have spent about $2500 there in the last few years, my brother has spent a lot also, and he wouldn't make a $50-$75 concession to compensate me for the improper tires they sold me that he now claimed were "unsafe". Amazing. He claimed I ordered them for another vehicle by mistake. Right buddy, I own a Saab 9-3 and don't know it's not a Saab 9-5.
I had another set of tires from them on another brand new vehicle that I now realize might have been causing vibration problems, but I didn't realize it at the time and sold the vehicle before I could determine that for sure. My wife was sick of the problems and just wanted out of the situation. The stock tires road smoothly, so I can only assume it was either the tirerack tires we put on it on the installation. So while they can't be held definitively responsible, it makes me aware of how vulnerable buyers are to their policies, and so I will not be using them again.
To their credit they had someone from management who, after reading the emails I was sent, did call and leave a message apologizing for the CSR's tone, saying that was not their policy, and trying to retain my business. But even he admitted I might now be too turned off to try again.
Tirerack is a nice sharp operation in many ways, but as with many success stories (home depot is a recent example) they lose focus on the customer, get arrogant, and lose the very thing that made them successful.
As for their online tire sizing system? Don't believe it. You will order a set of tires and they will call you and tell you those won't fit or aren't the proper type and will attempt to upsell you to more expensive tires. They did that twice with me.
I would point out to those who still like to buy tires online that there is another major tire seller online who also has local stores. This is a huge advantage. Why? Because if you have a bad tire they can warranty it on the spot. And if you have a problem with a wheel or tire, they will not point fingers back and forth. The buck stops with them, because they own both operations (install and sales).
I think if Tirerack would ammend their return and other policies to one more customer friendly, and not take the position that the customer is always wrong, they might be worth a shot. But as it stands now, they don't seem to want to spend anything to solve problems. With an online business comes many cost advantages (less overhead, etc), but they have to also realize that there is also much more potential for problems, and they need to just absorb these costs from time to time to keep customers happy. It might cost them $1 a tire to cover the shipping costs if a customer wants to return items, defective or not.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
brucec32
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Member: Bruce C
Location: Atlanta, GA
Reviews written: 131
Trusted by: 72 members
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