My wife purchased tires for her 2007 KIA Rondo at NTB in Woburn on 5/2 for $939.
Over the past few months she started noticing the wheel shaking when she drove on the highway so she brought it to the dealership thinking it was an issue with the car.
The dealership examined the car and took it for a test drive. They found that all four tires were improperly balanced and that 2 of the tires had no balance weights on them at all!
He explained that the weights were the cheaper stick on weights and not the 'bang on' weights. He said that the tires were wearing unevenly due to being out of balance.
The dealership rebalanced the wheels and recommended that we get new tires since the current tires were so badly and unevenly worn.
I called NTB in Woburn to speak to the manager about it and the girl that answered the phone put me on hold. She then cam back to the phone and started to explain to me that it could have been the shocks or the struts or the car was out of alignment.
I then asked if she was the manager... She said no. So I was a little taken aback that after asking for a manager I was still talking to a sales rep.
I explained to her that the dealership said the wear was definitely from the balancing and that they had never seen such a poor job of weighting a tire! She again put me on hold and then came back and said that since we did not come back every 6 months to have the tires rebalanced that there was nothing they could do.
So I said that they would not stand behind their work or the tire and she said again because we didnt come back to get the tires rebalanced the warranty didnt apply any more.
Needless to say I was very upset that:
1. I was not allowed to talk to a manager.
2. There was no sense of customer satisfaction or responsiblity on NTBs part.
3. The warranty only applies if I get my tires rebalanced every 6000 miles. Which we were not told and is in tiny print on the back of the receipt!
So I called the dealership back to explain NTBs position. The service manager said that in 35 years he has never heard of such a terrible warranty and terrible customer service. He explained that the balancing was shoddily done and done with inferior weights.
He said that tires very rarely have to be rebalanced unless you hit a pothole or curb etc. And for 4 tires to all be out of balance is unacceptable.
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