Tire shop totally screwed up moving tires over to new wheels

[Pew]

Only reason why I got the alignment was because I replaced all four struts. The car has tracked great after the alignment. The pulling didn't start until they completely messed up the tire swap, this Saturday.

Right, but the car tracking straight could mean that the alignment had two bad angles that cancel each other out or minimize the effects until the tires change position. If that's the case then the bad alignment wear has already embedded itself into your tires. In your current experience, the angles longer able to cancel each other out because the two front tires are now on the left side of the car and the rears on the right side. I bet if you put the left tires back on the front/put all 4 tires back to where they were prior to your DT visit, the pulling will go away.

This happened to my cx5 after a firestone alignment. The toe angles were pretty high but they cancelled each other out until I rotated the tires, then the pulling happened. Sometimes done on track cars (intentionally) for some extra turn-in but you could only rotate the tires front/back and not diagonal.

 

[Natesi]

Update: Discount Tire came through.

When I arrived to check-in I was very surprised that they refunded my initial service fee from having the tires moved over to the new wheels. I didn't make any sort of stink about it when I made the appointment to correct the issue - just described the problem and that was it - no drama, no negative tone - nothing. The person on the other end of the phone booked it and we hung up - no apology or anything. But apparently when I booked the appointment I was talking to the owner of that location and he setup a surprise for when I came in.

Long story short though: I was mistaken about how they had put the wheels in the wrong location. I felt like an ass, ate a big turd sandwich, apologized, and asked them to re-charge me for the refund, twice, but they refused.

I did have to go back a second time, yesterday, to get one of the tires re-rebalanced (for a total of 3 times on that wheel, in less than a week). It was road force balanced when I had the tires moved over to the new wheels, re-checked the first time I went in yesterday, yet was still having an issue. They re-rechecked it, when I returned again, and said it needed a little weight this time. Not sure if it threw a weight or what, but the vibrations are 95 percent gone now.

Regarding the pulling on the freeway: We tracked that down to a single tire that they determined was out of round - and will be replacing it next week.

All-in-all: A lot of trips and time spent at DT but they've done everything in their power to make this right.

 

[CKN]

What brand/ kind of tires?

 

[Natesi]

I've always bought Michelin, Pirelli, or Bridgestone - been kind of a tire snob.

But since this is a 20 year old car that came with bald tires - and I didn't know if it would last 1 week or 10 years, I decided to go with something cheap, for starters. So these are Sentury brand. I had extremely low expectations, but honestly, considering the price they are pretty good. I've driven cars with way, way worse tires, FOR SURE (other people's cars, cars on test drives, or cars I bought as a teenager).