Circus at the tire shop

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Travelin Ram

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So, this was Tire Kingdom in Lehigh, FL. Not a recommended shop. The tires I bought from Big O out west, in the east TK is their corporate sister for warranty etc.

On the positives; the lugs were torqued properly, and they did replace my damaged cap with an OEM from Mopar. The repair IS holding air.

On the negatives: 3 tires were set to the door sticker with the front to rear reversed. Obviously done before the rotation. One tire was set to the pressure I specified on the paperwork. Tire balance is worse than before, so that’ll require a do-over elsewhere. He pulled off ALL the existing weights leaving the adhesive residue behind. Did a half azzed job cleaning the wheel before applying the new weights, they’re not very solidly applied.

I am cognizant of the challenges in hiring these days. But good times or bad, better businesses recruit the cream, and bottom feeders take what they can get. My mistake in hindsight was placing any value on the lifetime road hazard and rotate/balance I’d paid for. Should have just paid for it again at a better shop.
 

2012RAM1500RT

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I hate to be negative about it but the "American Pride" is gone. The employees are working for that check on Friday. I actually know of people that will calculate how much their bills are this week and figure how many hours they need to cover it and that's all they want to work. Getting tires balanced or a front end alignment done correctly is near impossible the first time. I hate hearing the words "within specs" with a purple passion. How about getting it "right" the first time. I had my tires balanced 3 different times at one shop and every time they balanced them the weights were in a different place each time????? I ask them if they ever thought their machine needed calibrated or something in which I got a stupid look. I got tired of fooling with them and took it to another place and made them aware of their competition not able to get it right which works because they like to make sure they get it right to make the others look bad. My tires are balanced since then. My tire will have to wear very fast before I'll get my front end aligned because getting it back with the steering wheel straight is an act of God. It's not just shops that are the problem, it's EVERYWHERE! I've been in the American workforce for 46 years now and seeing how terrible it has declined in the past 10 to 12 years I can't wait to retire in the next 5 years to get out of it. It's so embarrassing to be a part of it now! I miss "AMERICAN PRIDE" so bad!
 

Doug Ram

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I hate to be negative about it but the "American Pride" is gone. The employees are working for that check on Friday. I actually know of people that will calculate how much their bills are this week and figure how many hours they need to cover it and that's all they want to work. Getting tires balanced or a front end alignment done correctly is near impossible the first time. I hate hearing the words "within specs" with a purple passion. How about getting it "right" the first time. I had my tires balanced 3 different times at one shop and every time they balanced them the weights were in a different place each time????? I ask them if they ever thought their machine needed calibrated or something in which I got a stupid look. I got tired of fooling with them and took it to another place and made them aware of their competition not able to get it right which works because they like to make sure they get it right to make the others look bad. My tires are balanced since then. My tire will have to wear very fast before I'll get my front end aligned because getting it back with the steering wheel straight is an act of God. It's not just shops that are the problem, it's EVERYWHERE! I've been in the American workforce for 46 years now and seeing how terrible it has declined in the past 10 to 12 years I can't wait to retire in the next 5 years to get out of it. It's so embarrassing to be a part of it now! I miss "AMERICAN PRIDE" so bad!
And get off my lawn too! ;-) !

OK, on the serious side, I commiserate. And its not just the big trucks that these places can't get right. In our town Walmart is known as a better place to get tires. That's how bad the local tire shops are.

The best place I've used to get tires, although it doesn't do alignments, is the small garage near my house. A three bay hop that will repair anything but lawn mowers owned by father and son team with 4 long time employees. Dad opened it around 1980 when he left the Air Force. He answers the phone himself, which is not always a good thing as he says nothing but "Lakeview" which he usually cuts off to "...ew". If he doesn't have the tires I want, he takes Tire Rack deliveries too.
 
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2019RamInSC

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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.


That is absolutely insane. I would never return to a tire store that did that. It's a principle.
 

thkbaron

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I personally don't think covid has affected the way people to do business pride wise. That's been slipping for years. It's just screwed up the supply chain. The problem is we have to pay so much money for these types of jobs just to keep workers. I'm sorry but changing tires shouldn't be a 20 dollar an hour job. Unless you are a custom shop or a small town independent shop jobs like this shouldn't necessarily be a career for most people. These are stepping stones or college jobs high school etc unless you are me and wish I had enough time in a day to work in a tire shop. haha. I love that crap. Anyways the problem is that we aren't teaching our kids to take pride in anything anymore and be good people/employees etc. That is getting lost in our world. Our country hands out too much free crap these days and no one needs to work for anything anymore. Why would someone who's already borderline lazy work if they can collect unemployment and get a free check or three from uncle sam?
 

GTyankee

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You must be thinking of 1980
Soon after big business was told to employ 33 1/3 % women
skill level did not enter into the equation, my particular job was pretty efficient when it came to OJT. Even though the job was manual labor intensive.
When you had X amount of time in, you could take a test, multiple choice, & promote & even transfer to a different department.
Around the year 2000, they brought in people on Welfare, they only had to work 40 hours, so that their family could collect a monthly check, no matter what size the family was, the work was manual labor.
A small portion of Those Welfare collectors for the most part sued the State of California for making them work for Welfare money. Then there were the damn good workers that were glad to learn a trade to at least try to get off of welfare.
So that program was cancelled.

Then California was told that they had to hire, a certain percentage of people from different origins & i retired
they had to have 17% of this 7 % of that 12% & they had to hire Translators so everyone could communicate
 

thkbaron

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I don't think we need reasons for who we hire. We should hire the best person for the job regardless. It's why the quality of our work has went in the toilet. Among a lot of other things. Sorry got off on a tangent. Please folks who are employed............one thanks for working right now because there are a lot of pos people out their freeloading off the system.....and lets all do the jobs to the best of our ability. If you have a **** boss let them know and why you feel that way. There are plenty of jobs out there to be had right now without having to work in a bad one. All of us tire shoppers etc. We really do appreciate great customer service and will go back to the places that treat us well and don't screw us over.
 

2012RAM1500RT

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And truck drivers........ They come in, fill out an application, I go through the trouble giving them a road test (same old stories, " I drove over the road for 5 years, wife wants me home at night") and when they find out our trucks are manual transmissions they don't show up for the job we gave them. Manual transmissions take their texting hand away I guess! And the grown men that can't drive a manual transmission.......! WOW!
 
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