Buying Tires During a Pandemic

Tires, they make the world go round. Ok, maybe not the world, but your vehicle wouldn’t be able to move without them. Buying new tires never seemed to be a hard thing. My first set was a birthday present when I turned eighteen. When I graduated from high school, I was gifted a suitcase, hmmm new tires and a suitcase, think they were telling me something?

From then on if I needed new tires I either just went in and bought them, or better yet, trade in my current vehicle and buy a new one. The best deal I ever had on tires was when I bought a 2012 Jeep Compass with the deal of tires for life as long as I own that Jeep and keep up with the general maintenance. That wasn’t hard and when it came time for new tires the dealership slapped them on at no cost to me.

Now with a 2017 Jeep Cherokee and over 76,000 miles it’s more than time to purchase new tires. The tire for life program was not available at the time of purchase, I tried. It’s Jan 2021 and everything is still hard to accomplish by just walking in and getting tires. With my work schedule it was hard to find something open when I was available to take the car in.

I finally found that Walmart had tires and were open when I could get the car in. I bought the tires online and then attempted to set up an appointment. This was the next fun part, finding a date that I could make work was a week away. Figuring that those tires were already on borrowed time I made the appointment.

Arriving fifteen minutes early for my appointment and I find that no one is in the tire center. I see a sign stating they don’t open till eight and my appointment was at eight. Ok, So I have to wait a few minutes, no worries. A minute after eight and still no lights on in the service area. I decided to walk around to the front door of Walmart and proceed to the tire center from the inside. One person was in the center and he was on the phone. Once off I tell him I’m there for my eight am appointment and now it’s eight fifteen. He laughs about not getting the other entrance open or turning on the lights in the bays, I’m losing confidence in his ability.

I’m now checked in and he tells me that’s he is alone until nine, it may take an hour to an hour and a half to complete the work. I already waited a week since I ordered the tires, and a couple months since thinking about it. Fine, take an hour and a half, just get it done.

The service area doesn’t have a waiting area, no chairs nearby, so I begin the wander the store. No place to get a cup of coffee, oh yeah, covid eliminated that too. About a half hour into my wandering I end up back at the tire center. He’s working on getting the tires on the car and I patiently wait. True to his word, the car is ready in an hour and a half.

Taking off I notice the car feels pretty good, was worried that maybe the new tires would be louder than the old, but it sounds good. The wife wanted to do some errands and I was looking forward to getting them done so I could enjoy the rest of the day. I get home and tell her to get ready. We pile back into the car only to find out that the driver front tire was low on air. How can that be, it’s a brand-new tire? Annoyed, we head back to Walmart and informed them of the tire issue. It had lost almost half of its air in less than an hour.

He takes the tire off the car and checks it all over. Then he finds the leak, then another, another then two more and another. Five little pin hole leaks in the side of the tire. Obviously, a manufacture or possible a shipping defect. Old tires gone, and they don’t have another tire of the same make. Meanwhile, while I’m dealing with my issue two other people are there with issues as well. A lot of tension could be felt. The person that was helping me didn’t know what to do about my problem and had called the manager to find out what solutions were available. To me it seemed simple, just get another tire, and exchange it. That wasn’t the solution that was offered to me. What was offered was return the defective tire, reorder a replacement and buy one to hold me until the new tire arrives. They want me to come back and experience this all again. Hmmmmm, no. While I wanted to just exchange the tire, they still insisted that I return the defective one, fine, they have me with a 3-wheel car. I returned the tire and purchased one they had in stock that was the same size. I’m not going back; I’m not impressed with the tire center.