Circus at the tire shop

[Travelin Ram]

Circus isn’t the BEST term, but I’m trying to keep this clean…

Made an appointment days ago for a puncture repair, rotate and balance. I bought these BFG’s last year with lifetime coverage on all that.

Two hours in after me showing up at the appointed time, all I have is a patch done. Truck reappears in the parking lot and sits a while. Finally I ask, and first the clerk says waiting for space, then checks with tech who claims it’s ALL done. Nope, I’ve been watching the whole time.

And, BTW, he’s gouged the finish off my Ram head center cap (OEM).

So now I’m waiting on round 2, while the manager calls Ram about getting a replacement cap.

I’ll give an update later and name names after I see what the final outcome is.

The only positive I can cite is he DID hand torque the lugs. As he was putting the repair back in the same location rather than proceeding to rotate

 

[Travelin Ram]

Three hours and counting. Manager says he’s ordered a cap and it’ll be here in two weeks.

Still dragging around in the back with rotating and balance. Not surprised considering the tech is probably less motivated than before he got caught. I was tempted to just leave earlier because under these circumstances I don’t get any positive feeling about this shop touching my truck.

And there’s a little backstory too: last spring I came in with a puncture, and they gave me the runaround saying they were booked up and couldn’t touch it for a week. So I went down the street to a competitor and paid for the repair, which they jumped on and did immediately in minutes.

Seems they are more interested in selling warranties and lifetime services than honoring them.

 

[Travelin Ram]

And now the manager tells me one tire needs 18 ounces to balance. Which is way out of spec. It didn’t have any significant vibration before. They’re dismounting it and remounting at 180 degrees to see if that helps.

This is becoming a serial comedy, or tragedy, depending on the final outcome.

 

[LouM]

good luck

 

[Travelin Ram]

Four hours and I finally escaped that shop.

Positives:
The tire balance seems OK. Have to get it on the interstate later to be sure.
They did agree to replace the center cap without argument.

Negatives:
One rear tire at 44, one at 62. Fronts at 65. Looks like he was reading the door placard backwards three times out of four, and decided to approximate what I asked for once just for fun.
They stripped off ALL the original weights on ALL the wheels. Left the white adhesive crap behind. Half assed job cleaning off the brake dust before applying new ones. Not confident they’re going to stay.

Later I’m going to look up the part number on the paperwork for the replacement center cap to see if it’s Mopar or something from EBay.

To anyone with the patience to read through all this ranting, I sincerely hope you’ve had a better day than me! Or at least passed a few idle moments.

 

[Grand Mesa]

.

 

[GTyankee]

Circus at Tire Shop
you did not state if it was a Tire Shop or a Dodge Dealership

I never buy tires at a Dodge Dealership, they over charge & they will not warranty tires because Mopar did not manufacture them.

I don't let the dealership touch my tires after i buy a Ram
They have one of the best tire balancing machines ever made, it is the Hunter Road Force Balance Machine.
Dealers will not send any techs to the training class that Hunter has, because that would mean that the techs would get a certificate & that would mean higher pay.

Several years ago the dealership techs knocked off my wheel weights when i had the Ram in for a rotation.
Then they sent me on my way, i got on the highway at 65 MPH & my steering wheel shook so hard, it actually hurt my forearms.
After several attempts to find out why it was out of balance.
I left that dealership & drove directly to Discount Tire, who by the way, uses the same Hunter machine & they balanced the tire on the first try

 

[PoMansRam]

Yeah, I think the 'rona made everything even worse than normal.

Sounds similar to big tire chain place in the Buffalo NY area. They're a decent shop with good pricing and somewhat recently became full service as well (brakes, suspension, alignments, etc)

If you go in for a free patch job or rotation (free if you bought the tires from them), you will wait hours and pretty much have to drop your vehicle or the tire and come back for it. I don't often go there because of this.

I had them put a set of tires on my wife's Nissan Pathfinder a few months back. They offered a free alignment check with the new tire installation.

2hrs into it, a tech comes out and says my front brakes were under 5mm pad thickness and recommended replacing. I knew I was due. ~$300+tax for new front pads/rotors. Not a bad price, but I declined. They still hadn't even done the alignment check nor put the new tires on yet. I told them to skip the alignment and just get the new tires on there. Ain't nobody got time for that.. Over 2.5hrs later I was out the door with new tires.

 

[Grand Mesa]

.

 

[OCDTech]

My trip was a disappointment too. Scratched my perfect wheels with the balance machine, and i had to RE balance them myself, thank god my buddy has a tire and balance machine, (his mount wont accept 20s) This was not the dealer by the way, independent shop.

 

[oe542bob]

TravelinRam, that really is disappointing. Last year I had a shop rebalance my front tires on my 2500. I stood outside the doors and watched. When the tech tried to use the balancer, he couldn’t figure out to secure the wheel. Finally another tech showed him what to do. Got them balanced finally.
The real bad thing is when he installed the wheels. Turned out he just barely started the lug nuts and then relied on the impact to run them on. Didn’t think too much about that until 4 months later.
I had new AT tires installed and the manager at this place came out and asked me “who rotates your wheels” which I said i I do. He told me that they needed to replace 4 lug nuts that were cross threaded so bad they couldn’t get them back on.
I then remembered the summer time fiasco when I had the tires rebalanced. Ended up costing $40 for the lug nuts and the next time I rotated the tires, 2 of the studs were so bad I had to replace them too.

 

[MantaRay67]

Why aren't we putting these clowns out of business? If this were me, I would make it my second job to slam them on every forum, social media, and filing complaints with the Better Business Bureau and any TV consumer advocate that would listen.

Sorry you guys are going through this. My local shop is managed by a friend of 20+ years and his Sr. Mechanic/State Safety Inspector is a former Marine. I'd trust him with my life and I trust him with my vehicles. Several years ago I watched him fire a tech after catching him numerous time spinning lugs on with an impact.

 

[62Blazer]

Not saying it makes it right, but just like every other business they are probably struggling to find enough workers. The other issue is that these big tire shops only use the lowest paid and inexperienced people to do those types of jobs. I'm not tire tech expert by any means but at my previous job I had access to a full shop and all the tire changing equipment and learned how to run the tire changer and balancer pretty quick (it's really not that hard!). Even with minimal experience I could pull my truck in, set it up on a hoist, pull the tires, put a patch on one, re-balance and install them in an hour easily

 

[Irishthreeper]

Covid may be affecting what kind of workers we have out there but my general feeling is that young American workers just don’t give a ****. I take my Ram into the dealership for oil changes and rotations simply to have the documentation. Some are good, others awful.

 

[Doug Ram]

Which company was this? Was it a franchise tire store?

 

[Coastal WA Gal]

Yikes! I'm sorry to hear that you had to deal with this kind of bogus nonsense, Travelin Ram. I notice you did not mention the name and location of this FUBAPS (fouled up beyond all previous standards) place and I'm sure I'm not the only one who would prefer to avoid it. If that's a chain store, franchise or not, I hope you plan to copy and paste everything you posted here into an email to their corporate HQ customer satisfaction team. I also hope you will do the same in Yelp, Google and Yellow Pages reviews. People like these keep pulling this kind of nonsense because they're confident that no one will make a fuss and call them out on it.

 

[Airmousam]

Does suck, and ****** service is the worst...but neg reviews will have zero effect.. no one is losing their job and perhaps the owner is trying as hard as he can...diff, prob unpopular opinion, and thats ok... but I hang with several small biz owners and its a huge struggle/****show out there...****heads they get is what they get...it blows!

 

[Moparfanatic21]

We used to have a mom and pop store ran by a family. They only did tires and didn't even have a lift (used jacks). They did the big rigs and they were cheap. They had a number listed on the door so I called one time said I need a tire out on that was bald just to get me through until the new ones came. He said $15 for a mount and rebalance. I get there he said $15 is to much he'll do it for $10.

That was a Sunday he came in when they were closed just for me. So I gave him $80 and said keep it. They shut down and no one around here is any good. I bought the machines for my shop, but finding people to do the work with pride is nearly impossible.

 

[Grand Mesa]

.

 

[rvance]

I'm lucky enough to live next door to the tire/oil shop and I know the owner. It helps to be in a small town. The owner gets out there and mounts the tires himself. If I have a problem I just tell him.