About 6 years ago I experienced flat tire while in the Dallas area. I removed the wheel/tire and took it to DISCOUNT TIRE for repairs. The shop in Irving Texas repaired the tire and told me No charge for the repair just come back when you need to purchase new tires. This was greatI felt that a facility that has this policy had to be good; I WAS TOTALLY INCORRECT!!!
A couple of years ago I purchased a complete set of high end Michelin tires for my Dodge Ram ton truck. On the way home I noticed an unusual vibration or shake from the tires and returned to the shop for an inspection, I pointed out that a couple of the wheels had a huge amount of lead weight to balance the tire; a good premium tire should not require that much weight to obtain balance. Discount Tire in Longview removed all the wheels/tires and rebalanced them for me and told me they we way out of balancehow could this be since they were just installed??? I took this as just a bad day for the guys in the shop and went home.
Upon arrival at home I noticed that the left front wheel (polished aluminum wheel) had scratches and scrapes on it where the extra wheel weights had been installed. Come to understand that the mechanic in the shop had damaged the wheel during installation of the new tires and attempted to cover it up by adding a number of lead wheel weights over the damage in order to hide the damage. Of course the shop in Longview denied all this and attempted to tell me it was simply a bad balance and that the technicians never would try to hide any damage. Yeah Right!!!
Another incident a short while later involved my Jeep Wrangler. I took the Jeep in to have the wheels/tires balanced and upon arriving home I noticed that the center cap of one of the polished aluminum wheels was bent and damaged severely. The technician who did the tire balancing attempted to pry the center cap from the wheel with a screwdriver and bent and damaged the cap. Since it would not fit properly on the wheel he then took a hammer and banged away at the center cap in order to get it to stay in the wheel. This combination of prying and hammering totally destroyed the center cap. Worst of all is that Discount Tire attempted to hide this damage and did not point it out to me before leaving the shop. I returned and demanded a new cap. After a bit of verbal exchange the shop manager finally agreed and said they would order a new cap and that I could come pick up the cap the following Monday. I drove to the shop a week later as directed and there was no center cap to be found; they told me they would reorder again!!! Since I live about 30 miles from Discount Tire this meant several trips back and forth to have damage repaired that Discount Tire attempted to hide in the first place.
Then two weeks ago I took my Jeep Wrangler into the Discount Tire location in Longview to purchase a set of 5 Michelin tires. After waiting in line for someone to finally wait on me, I then gave all the vehicle information to the sales person at the counter. During the middle of our conversation regarding tire availability and purchase price he answered the phone and started looking up information for the telephone customer. I vented my feeling by telling him that they could choose one of us to work with at a timeas I was not going to wait for him to handle telephone customers while putting me on the back burner to wait. You would think that they would focus on a customer willing to spend $1,000 for a set of tires over a telephone customer seeking information. Regardless I told the sales representative of my position and that is when another sales person came to ask me how he could help!!! The first sales person elected not to put the telephone customer on hold so a second salesperson then wanted to gather all of the same information on my vehicle and what I was looking for. At this point I expressed my disgust with their customer service and told them I would elsewhere to buy. And I did. I drove a mile down the road to a competitor of Discount Tire and purchased a set of 5 Michelin tires. My vow is simplei will never set foot in a discount tire facility ever again.
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