I blew out a tire driving down the interstate and the pressure on another one was low, so the very next day I went to get a new one. I was worried about the spare on my car because it's so small, so I was looking for the closest tire shop in between my classes.
I went to Pep Boys on Valley Mills drive, and even though I hadn't heard anything good about them, I gave it a shot. I walked in, and it took Earnest almost 20 minutes to greet me. After he finally stopped texting and realized I was there, it took him another 30 minutes to give me a quote. There was no one else in there, and he told me it would take an hour to put the new tire on, and fix the hole I had in the other one.
I went into the lobby and almost two hours later, Earnest told me that my car was fixed, and I was good to go. I payed the cashier, and figured that I wouldn't have to come back.
I parked my car in the parking garage at school, which has security cameras and police. Not even one week later (I still hadn't driven it) I came back to my car to find the tire pressure 10 PSI low in the tire they plugged. I couldn't see anything and thought it might be something Pep Boys did wrong, so I took it back to them there were two ladies in front of me complaining of problems that were identical to mine, Earnest behind the counter got really quiet and didn't say much after that.
After another hour of waiting, all that Earnest and the manager Melissa Saunders told me was "we can't fix it". I never got an explaination or anything. They tried to sell me another tire, but I told them to give me my car and I was taking my business elsewhere, they told me they couldn't do that because the tire could blow out and was unsafe. So, I told them to put my spare back on and I left.
I went to another local tire shop that my family has been using for years. They told me there was a hole in my sidewall on the inside closest to the frame of the car, and that it was done intentionally more than likely by the person who plugged it to begin with. This could not have happened at school because we checked the cameras, and it was just a big enough hole to leak that much in a week.
The next day I called the manager of Pep Boys and she (Melissa Saunders) was very rude and unhelpful, all she told me was "we don't run that kind of business". Along with their terrible customer service, she and the rest of the crooked Pep Boys "mechanics" put me, my car, and anyone else who was on the road at risk thinking to earn some more business.
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