Monday, July 14, 2008

Tire-d of this mess

My van tire was flat on Saturday. I took it and they patched and we were all good. Sunday morning, I went to run to the grocery store, only to find that my tire was flat AGAIN! There was another spot of metal in it, just down from the original one. RF put the the spare on (which is fortunately full size), marked both spots and we did our stuff that day. This morning, we took it to the same place that we had patch it and they told me that the tire was bad and I'd have to replace it. Grr! They told me on Saturday that "the tire looks good and there is nothing else wrong with it. We checked your other tires and they all look good too"

I ended up calling a few tire places and got prices for tires. It was hard to compare since some give you prices for mounted and balanced, some quote you prices on pairs, some give you single tire just the tire, some have no idea what tire my van needs,despite me telling them the number on the freaking tire. Eventually, I got prices that were comparable and figured that was the best I was going to get.

RF took my paper to the place and explained to them what happened (I'm feeling inexplicably grumpy today and I don't think I would have been able to be calm about) and asked them to price match the cheapest place we found. They agreed to that and RF pointed out that we paid $20 to have the tire patched, just Saturday and that we felt that should be applied to the cost of the new tires (because if they had told us on Saturday that the sides were weak and probably needed replaced, we wouldn't have paid to patch it) The guy agreed and took the money off the price match that he gave us.

So my van is sitting at Kirby Firestone on Mattis, waiting for the tires to come over from another store so they can be put on. Poor Rf though. When we took the van to actually drop it off (RF walked to check on the tire), I asked the guy how they were going to put the tires on. I said "when you put the new tires on, will they go to the front, with the front tires being rotated to the back?" RF said "no, the rear tire" The guy knew what I was asking and told me that the rears would be replaced but that they would rotate them around to make them work best. RF just looked kind of confused until I explained about new tires going on the drive wheels and the older tires going on the other wheels. Then he wanted know why I hadn't just dealt with it LOL (as explained above, I likely would have taken someone's head off if I had to argue even a little bit about any of it)

3 comments:

Quigs78 said...

That sucks.

And I liked your clever title. :)

makeup_girl said...

If Brady is ever out of town, and I have tire issues, I'm calling you for help!

The Fearless Freak said...

Only if the kids aren't around! I learned car maintenance from the "school of my dad" which involves lots of cussing and tool throwing. My mom tells the story about how I was little (like 2ish) and Dad was working on something so I got out my tools and started working on my bike. I stood there for a few minutes with my hands on my hips before throwing my wrench down and shouting "F IT" and walking away LOL