I just got off the phone with a pleasant woman from the Wal Mart store where the incident occurred.
She said some interesting things. One was that she dealt with a similar problem last week involving a customer that brought back a defective tire. She said she contacted the tire manufacturer and was told that liability rested on Wal Mart because they buy so many tires and therefore, get such a price break, that the manufacturer can’t absorb replacement costs.
There is a very troubling factor to all of this. The cashier that I dealt with, and every other worker in the tire department complied, said that they were not going to replace any more tires to customers that did not purchase the Road Hazard Warranty. As a matter of fact I was told three times by the cashier that their department had received an e-mail from “district” laying out this policy.
I wrote in the first post that I never buy the Road Hazard Warranty and I said it was a racket. Let me clarify that thought a little. The Road Hazard Warranty is not a warranty at all, it is insurance that would cover bad luck or, my stupidity. If I run over a nail I would get the tire replaced or fixed because I paid a premium when I bought the tire. Even if I bought this “warranty”, in no way am I actually protected from getting a badly manufactured tire. In essence, it seems, Wal Mart doesn’t want to stand behind the tire nor does the manufacturer, from what this lady told me this morning.
So you have manufacturers cranking out tires and selling them at a cut rate to meet Wal Mart’s tremendous need for supply. You have Wal Mart employees saying that there is some kind of corporate policy that they won’t stand behind the product but will offer insurance against my bad luck or stupidity. A lot of tires being sold yet, nobody seems concerned with safety. It seems that Wal Mart knows they are sometimes selling defective tires and are trying to recoup the replacement cost with the bogus warranty.
I have been buying tires for a long time. I have never had a new one blister like this one did. This tire was bad enough that I let the air out of it before I changed it for fear of it exploding. If a front tire blows out on a front-wheel drive at fifty m.p.h. it is dangerous.
Wal Mart is selling a lot of tires. My experience indicates that they are not willing to stand behind them. I was told by several employees that there is some kind of policy in place that appears to be a device to cover costs of defective tires. Are lives being lost because of the way Wal Mart is doing business? I would much rather pay $8.00 extra for a tire that was safe than the same amount to subsidize the practice of cutting corners.
By the way, the lady I spoke with this morning said “Next time you come to the store, there will be a gift card in your name for $5.50 to cover the balancing charge you paid the other day”. I politely refused but also said that I was a little insulted by that. I expressed some of my concerns regarding safety and corporate policy. She told me she would look into this, to which I replied, “You should start with this alleged e-mail from “district” I was told about”. She told me she would get back to me in a few days with some answers. I’ll keep you posted.
Related posts
Tags: defective tires, tire safety, Wal-Mart
Shane wrote,
The Road Hazard Warranty is a joke as well. Last year I purchased a set of Goodyear Eagle F1 GS-D3 tires. They have less than 10,000 miles on them and I hit a nail on my way to work. I got another tire on there temporarily and headed over to my local Wal-Mart store and showed them the nail. They wouldn’t patch the tire because it is supposedly too close to the sidewall. It is in fact 1 inch from the wall. Since they don’t stock these tires in-store, I am told that I will have to order a tire online and have it shipped to the store and be reimbursed then. Problem now is that the treadwear is at 4/32 (yes, in less than 10,000 miles and under 1 year) so they told me that even after I order this tire and come in, I may get stiffed depending on if they decide to go by mileage or treadwear. I am still unsure what I’m going to do. I don’t want to get a single new tire with 3 others nearing the end of their usable lifetime. If I decide to continue with their suggestion, I’ll post back the result.
Link | September 2nd, 2008 at 11:39 am
Pribek wrote,
That’s a drag Shane. I haven’t thought about this in a while. This situation I had, I finally got tired of trying to chase people down. If I chose to pursue it further, I felt I would have to get an attorney on it.
Link | September 2nd, 2008 at 2:37 pm