CR reports of counterfeit tires on the market
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JHZR2
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Doesn't surprise me at all. Some folks are completely mindless when buying stuff, which facilitates such situations. All to save a buck.
What makes this case difficult is that the counterfeit tires may have been made using original molds.
Originally Posted By: rjundi
The exact reason I will not put any Chinese made tires on my cars.
There are plenty of brands foreign and domestic Made in USA and other 2nd or first world countries that don't cost much more.
The solution, clearly, is to just buy overpriced Michelin tires!
There are some interesting ones on there for sure!
Originally Posted By: eljefino
Fascinating. Tires-easy already scares me with its mishmosh of unbranded "brand" names. While I can't judge a tire by its tread pattern, it wierds me to see no sipes and some sort of obvious perpindicular mold line in their own pictures.
Originally Posted By: Miller88
The solution, clearly, is to just buy overpriced Michelin tires!
These products are sometimes called "3rd shift". It happens all the time with electronics. A Chinese factory does an extra run at the tail end of a contract or whatever.
Back in 2008 one of my wife's former business associates was based in Taiwan said that something like 90% of the parts in their industry coming out if China were fake. This was in "08.
It seems this is a special case of a factory being "decommissioned" and the molds stolen. Certainly, this is not an example of all Chinese tires.
Look at that semi next to you on the highway, they run "Double Coin" tires and others. Those companies watch maintenance costs so they must find some value in running Chinese tires.
There are some Chinese passenger car tires that do get decent reviews -especially when looking at the value equation.
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Here's the original story on the CR website with a video.
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2014/11/counterfeit-car-tires-pose-consumer-risk/index.htm
TLDR for people who don't want to read it:
-CR tested several no-name Chinese tires and found they were very bad.
-The owner of the brand name "Pegasus" contacts CR and says their tires aren't quite that bad.
-They swap info and API, owner of the Pegasus brand, says those tires were not made for API and they know nothing about them.
-API claims the tires were made after their contract ended with the Chinese-owned factory and claim the molds used to make the tires disappeared.
-Tire importer says they imported one load of the tires and no longer stock that brand.
In theory, API could be covering their rear ends because their tires are junk. But assuming they're telling the truth, this is a disturbing scenario where seemingly the retailer and brand owner claim any problems with the tire won't be handled by them.
My takeaway from this is to avoid no-name tires purchased through questionable channels. I don't love the idea of purchasing any tire made in China, but I think purchasing a real, brand-name tire from a reputable source will prevent these types of issues in most cases.
Well, that seems like a little bit of a stretch, unless you bought those Michelins from a sketchy source.
The issues here seem to be that these are no-name brands marketed by a small company (API) produced under contract by Chinese tire companies and sold by a website that sells lots of weird no-name tires.
I think purchasing a reputable brand through a reputable channel can go a long way towards preventing these issues.
Originally Posted By: mrsilv04
This could explain that horrid set of Michelin LTX M/S tires that I owned...
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Originally Posted By: supton
Sounds like supply chain issue, which can strike any line of product, high end or low end. Where your middle man buys his product from is important.
How does one audit the guys in the middle?
Originally Posted By: CKN
It seems this is a special case of a factory being "decommissioned" and the molds stolen. Certainly, this is not an example of all Chinese tires.
Look at that semi next to you on the highway, they run "Double Coin" tires and others. Those companies watch maintenance costs so they must find some value in running Chinese tires.
There are some Chinese passenger car tires that do get decent reviews -especially when looking at the value equation.
Tread design of that Minos looks like a pirelli nero knockoff.
I've had Wynstar Phaser R23 and they were pretty decent for the 60k miles I had on it.
But in this case, it is a fake name brand tire, and we all know what happen when people are selling fake stuff: they don't care about quality.
Tire Easy in this case got to handle this correctly: recall the tires, and sue their middle man / file an insurance claim for the loss. And most importantly, stop buying on alibaba from no name middle men.
Counterfeits of a legit (if there is such a thing) Chinese tire, imagine that. In the event of a legal claim, I'd think this situation would be quite a debacle.
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