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Opinions on Discount Tire

wazzabie

wazzabie

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So I had a nail in the tire which caused a slow leak. The tire was purchased from Discount Tire along with there certificate. The certificate includes free tire repair. My tire is just over 10 years old so they would not repair it. I take the tire to another large tire shop and the other location repair the tire for 12 bucks and says it still has 16K miles of use. The tires are still good. I've never been a fan of discount tire. Discount tried to sell me 4 new tires when I still had some life on the old tires.
 
I will not run anything down the road over 5 years old, unknowingly. Have done a few sketchy runs lately because I did not check tire dates. Even our local small private shops will not repair a 10 year old tire.
 
Wait a minute the tires on my 77 will be 5 years old this Nov. I consider them still new.
Afik there is no DOT officially stated tire age.
My old fleet set a time limit of 10yrs. This works for me. But also depends on how the tire are kept and their condition. The front tires on my dune buggy are pushing 40.
Answer the OP Discount tire has been great for me and my family. Many sets of tires recently.
Best yet recently, they stopped sponcering Brad Kowalski
 
Certs are for the life of the tire. The tire dies at 10 years or 2/32 depth.
The other guy saying they have 16k left is fluffin you. There’s no way to actually quantify that.
Tire manufacturers and rma set the repair guidelines and dtc/at tightened them up a little bit, but not a lot.

Your customer experience is industry standard.
 
This tire is 12 years old. I've put maybe 4k miles on it in the past 8 years. I didn't realize the age or I would have considered replacing them far sooner:
full
Plenty of tread is meaningless. That rubber is hard and will not resist punctures nor coming apart.

My last set of BFG AT's might have gone 10 years before they looked that bad, and they were losing air out of all the tiny cracks. Before I realized they were that old I took them to an independent shop who was willing to plug a bigger hole, and after he did and tested the plug in water, said forget it, the tire is shot. Age as a factor in determining tire wearout is absolutely a thing.

Related to discount, I got four new tires for my car a month back or so, which were not chinese cheapos. Less than two weeks later the sidewall had bulged on one enough to almost unseat the bead. I took it in for replacement and they tried (not too hard, but they said it) to get me to pay for the road hazard certificate again. I told them it was manufacturer defect, thats not a road hazard, why should I have to pay for a certificate? I was actually willing to pay for it if they dug in if it was policy, I agreed to whatever their terms were when I bought them, but they said due to how soon the failure happened, they wouldn't charge me.
 
You can run old tires and get lucky, until you don't. Not worth ruining a rim or worse to save money on tires IMO.

I hate buying truck and trailer tires, because they fail due to age far before they run out of tread and they are expensive, but blowouts are not fun.
 
Old tires loose their oils and dry after time. Just because it has tons of tread doesn't mean it's a safe tire. Putting around town or on your farm/property if you have it is probably fine. But unsafe on street or highways, this why discount wants them replaced, it becomes a liability issue for them and more importantly for you choosing to run them.

Why even chance it?

www.indystar.com

Story from GET Creative: Even if they look fine, old tires can still pose a safety problem

The lifespan of a tire might be less than you think.
www.indystar.com
 
obijuank5 said:
Certs are for the life of the tire. The tire dies at 10 years or 2/32 depth.
The other guy saying they have 16k left is fluffin you. There’s no way to actually quantify that.
Tire manufacturers and rma set the repair guidelines and dtc/at tightened them up a little bit, but not a lot.

Your customer experience is industry standard.
Click to expand...
All my friends say the same thing. Discount tire certificates are only good for three years.
 
That is in the fine print, but Bruce Halle said to take care of the customer. Keep that in your back pocket to deter being taken advantage of. We never enforced it to people just being honest.
Now that Bruce is dead, a lot has changed.
 
I have never purchased the warranty, except for my daughters car, and have yet to use it. I had a side cut on one of the wife's tires. Held air, but at speeds i drive that car I didn't trust it anymore. DT said if I had bought the warranty it would have been replaced. They didn't have that tire model anymore, and two front were getting smooth so I got 4 new tires. I don't like having miss matched tires on the same axle, so if the tire you need is not made anymore what good is the warranty if it doesn't match the others.
 
I have purchased the certs on a few cars, used a couple times, I actually got the current tires on the jimmy there and bought the certs. This was after I had a blow out on 10 year old tire that had 16 splits covering the entire sidewall. This was one of several I blew, then I would buy more used ones about the same age cheap and blew more. The last blowout could have been bad if I was going highway speed. We would have been going highway speed in another mile or so.
 
Wes Harden said:
I have never purchased the warranty, except for my daughters car, and have yet to use it. I had a side cut on one of the wife's tires. Held air, but at speeds i drive that car I didn't trust it anymore. DT said if I had bought the warranty it would have been replaced. They didn't have that tire model anymore, and two front were getting smooth so I got 4 new tires. I don't like having miss matched tires on the same axle, so if the tire you need is not made anymore what good is the warranty if it doesn't match the others.
Click to expand...
If that happened on an awd car, that customer would get four new tires on the house if I were at the counter.
I spent several years at dtc if that wasn’t already obvious lol.
 
Bent77 said:
Rule #1

If you have several cars, you always need to have “a guy”


So whenever you need to do some sketchy or illegal shit, nobody will ask any questions
Click to expand...

This. Discount won't do it because corporate policy, plus they're in the business of moving through inventory and selling tires moves inventory.

I grew up in my Dad's shop starting out repairing all kinds of sketchy tires. We had full serve pumps in front of the shop, and when we were kids the job was to do full service pumping, check oil, tires, and wash the windshield. while the car was being filled. Aside from that you were the tire repair guy. It was a great start into the auto business and as you got older everybody would start teaching repair. Me and two other kids would split the work week shifts.

I have plugged and patched hundreds of bias plies that were 40 years old, with older than dirt dudes driving. Bald steel belt wearing through on multi axle commercial platforms plugged and good till it blows. Got to remember though when we were young sometimes you'd need help getting tires on the machine even with the helper ramp we built, cause they're heavy as **** when your 12 years old. Plug jobs were like 4 bucks and most of those people would come in when they could for new tires.

This college age kid once pulled in for air with a gash in the sidewall of his window van. He didn't have time, so he grabbed a roll of duct tape and taped it. Down the highway he went to the job, with brand new panes of glass on the side. Lol. We all wondered if he made it to the job.

I miss those days.
 
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