What's the general concensus on Firestone?

[colbystephens]

ok, so i pretty much hate them. i have considered in the past buying their lifetime wheel alignment tho for my k5 b/c it would be cool to get it aligned after every wheeling trip. i had my tires aligned by them once, and then went on a trip to AZ and by the time i had driven the 1400 miles to AZ, the front tires had worn CONSIDERABLY on the outter shoulders - so i'm leery of doing it. what do you think?

 

[BoondocK5]

A very close friend of mine, who is vary anal about keeping his carmaintenance up has that lifetime warranty, and was just complaining to me on saturday, about having to replace damn near everything in order to keep the warranty up, if you elect not to replace it ALL then your warranty is no good and they won't do **** for you. so my vote, NO don't bother.

 

[diesel4me]

I'm no fan...

The local Firestone auto service center here raped my mother out of 400+ bucks to replace a rotted rear brake line that popped in a store parking lot a few hundred feet away from the Firestone place,on her 1993 Caravan,while shopping with my sister!..they would not fix it unless they replaced the shoes(which were 1993 originals,but had 60 thousand miles on them,and plenty of "meat")..and the wheel cylinders,which were NOT leaking!..they acted like they did her a huge favor fixing it "right away",on a saturday afternoon ,close to their closing time!..for 400+ bucks!!

I could have driven it home using the E-brake on back roads with NO sweat,and fixed it myself for less than ten bucks!!(my house is only 2 miles from where they brokedown)....but I was not at home ,and they panicked,and walked to the Firestone place..

They must have had lots of free beer that weekend! --they saw them coming,and took advantage of them,being women ,unknowledgable about cars,and upset!!..and the front steel lines were just as rusty,but "they survived the bleeding process,so they will be ok".. YEAH???--so how come they insisted on replacing the OTHER unssasary parts,"for your own safety"???..they should have refused to do anything,if they were not going to do it 100%,and fix ALL the rotted lines...RAPISTS!!..

Wish it was ME who got that 400 bucks!--not that I'd do that to my mother,but I still could have saved her a ton of cash,and bought myself a six pack, or new shoes or something.. ..I'll NEVER reccomend them to anyone,unless they LIKE being bent over at the checkout counter...

 

[colbystephens]

yeah - i sympathize w/ that story. every experience i've had with them has been pretty poor. i think i'll probably just not do it.

 

[fabjunkie]

I will not have them do any maintenance type work for many stories like diesel4me shared. They wanted $800 to replace an axle seal or they wouldn't pass his state inspection (I used to do state inspections and no where does it have anything about an axle seal. It was not leaking onto his brakes either) He drove away. His wife's car's water pump went out that afternoon. He went up there and same story, they had to replace everything in the system, everything that was fine when he took it to another shop and had it done for like $230. Oh yeah, coincidentally, Firestone wanted $800 to do the water pump too.

I do use them for alignments though as they are plentiful and can be found almost anywhere. That may change the first time I go in for another alignment on my lifetime deal.

 

[tiger9297]

Let me say this one positive thing about Firestone. Our local Firestone has some of the best prices on tires in town.

Having said that their service leaves much to be desired. I have never had any problems with anything they have repaired BUT they will not do just one simple thing. Took my company vehicle to them to replace the front brake pads (happened last week). They wouldn't do it without turning the rotors which they said were bad and needed to be replaced, and on and on and on. I took it to a local shop owned by a friend of mine who I just asked to put new pads on. When I went to pick it up I asked him how the rotors looked (just to see what he would say) and he said they looked fine to him. Keep in mind that this guy is not only a mechanic but is a classic car enthusiast and owns/restores cars in the six figure range. He knows what he's doing. In my opinion the Firestone guys are not mechanics in that they really don't understand what they are doing. When a car comes in they look up the problem then refer to checklist A, then if the problem is "this" refer to checklist B, and so on. I just don't think they know what they are doing if its not in the book.

 

[colbystephens]

In my opinion the Firestone guys are not mechanics