OT: Best place to buy [car] tires?

[Nessism]

Originally Posted by rice rocket

What are you suggesting? That those 1300 people could have good knowledge of tires?

Again, most people buy maybe 10 sets of tires in their lifetime, and usually it's after several years of using their last set. What's "good" to them could be just marginally better than the clapped out old tires they just took off, because that's how the brain works. It's hardly a good judge of tire quality and characteristics, that's why you should pay more attention to the comparisons they conduct, and take user reviews w/ a grain of salt.

It doesn't take knowledge of tires to post how long a set of tires lasted on your car. And reading verbatim quotes from actual customers is one of the best ways to judge their satisfaction. I always read the review when purchasing things, whether it's tires or something off Amazon.

[kiwisimon]

Originally Posted by rice rocket

What's "good" to them could be just marginally better than the ------------ old ---- they just -----, because that's how the brain works. It's hardly a good judge of ---- quality and characteristics,

good thing that doesn't apply to bikes eh?

[jlwdm]

Originally Posted by rice rocket

Remember, statistically one in every two people is of below average intelligence...that's why you shouldn't trust user reviews.

That and people buy tires once every 3-4 years? Not only do they have small sample sizes, like in many court cases, memories fade quickly.


TireRack does do some of their own rigorous testing though.

I buy tires about 4 times a year.

Jeff

[jlwdm]

Originally Posted by Nessism

It doesn't take knowledge of tires to post how long a set of tires lasted on your car. And reading verbatim quotes from actual customers is one of the best ways to judge their satisfaction. I always read the review when purchasing things, whether it's tires or something off Amazon.

Looking for performance not mileage!!

Jeff

[BobbyJones]

Much like other comments on here, my local chain, Mavis, price matched my last purchase.

I went through the painful process of research, then price shopped the heck out of it online.

After what was going to be huge process buying online, shipping, having a third party install, etc. I learned a lesson.

Next time- 1 or 2 quick comparisons and see if the local place will match. Even if it's a little more, what's an extra 50 bucks over 4 years vs. the hassle?

[MikeD]

Originally Posted by Nessism

It doesn't take knowledge of tires to post how long a set of tires lasted on your car. And reading verbatim quotes from actual customers is one of the best ways to judge their satisfaction. I always read the review when purchasing things, whether it's tires or something off Amazon.

Yeah well if they didn't rotate their tires when the owner's manual said or took care of alignment and balance problems pronto, or maintain their tire pressure, those reviews aren't worth squat. I take these reviews with a grain of salt. Some are glowing, others are poor. What to believe? Same on Amazon. It's also within the realm of possibility that some tires work better on certain cars, others not.

[carpediemracing]

I work at a place that sells tires, does alignments, and services cars.

Keep in mind that your install/alignment is only as good as the tech that does the work. Find a good tech and have them work on your car. It's like a wheel builder - you find one that you trust and you have them do all your work.

Best prices for Bridgestones, mounted, is Costco. It's a bit crazy actually, how good the prices are. We're supposed to match prices but for Costco I don't. I tell customers to get the tires there and let us align the car.

I think TireRack is incredible. They are quick, have good stock, and have accurate inventory. I regularly special order tires from them for work, I have the tires within a few hours, and they're out the door sometimes as quick as 1 hour after I order them (unusual, best case scenario). Typical is 3-5 hours after I order. Our shop is 25-30 min away from one of their warehouses so we ask vendors to pick up tires for us.

Their prices are such that we can beat them slightly at their own price, but I don't do that. Get the tires from TireRack versus special ordering from a tire place unless the tire place can provide road hazard and match any warranties. We can't do that with special order tires.

I really hope that TireRack doesn't change much. I wasn't very happy with my experiences with Discount Tire, but I gave up on them many years ago, decades ago. I hope they are better now.

At Tire Rack do NOT buy the sale tires. Buy the full priced tires. The sale tires are at least a year old, if not older (sometimes you see a tire listed at three different sale prices, the cheapest ones are the oldest). Many people age out tires versus wearing them out, and unless you do 10-15+k miles a year, you're going to age out your "sale" tires before you wear them out. I consider tires 6 years old to be done, not from a selling point of view (to sell a tire it cannot be older than 5 years old), but for my own personal cars. I just switched out tires that have 8/32" tread off my wife's car. I want someone to buy them to drift or do burnouts, but as a daily or track tire they're done (summer tires from 2016). Likewise I have ~4k miles on another set of tires that will be replaced as soon as Bridgestone releases their next latest greatest summer tire; those tires are also 2016 tires.

In CT I do my alignment every 5 months. At 6 months it's out by enough that I noticed some minor uneven tire wear. At 4 months it was still too good to really align. I paid for a lifetime alignment so I do them when I want, to a certain extent. I drive the vehicle maybe 8000 miles a year, a Suburban. My other car, that I drive very low miles (1000 a year?) I do once a year no matter what. My wife's car every 5-6k miles.

If you're getting snows, get a second set of wheels. Don't do the snow tire change over. Every time you mount or dismount a tire you risk damaging it, and it's very time consuming. Instead, buy a second set of wheels, and do "just a tire rotation" when you switch wheels. Imagine that instead of switching wheels on a bike you switched tires on the rims? It would take a long time, you risk damaging the bead or tube or valve or whatever, you have to make sure you got everything seated okay, you test drive the wheels (if only for 100 yards) to make sure everything is good... or you can just switch wheels out. Switch the wheels out.

[Nessism]

Originally Posted by MikeD

Yeah well if they didn't rotate their tires when the owner's manual said or took care of alignment and balance problems pronto, or maintain their tire pressure, those reviews aren't worth squat. I take these reviews with a grain of salt. Some are glowing, others are poor. What to believe? Same on Amazon. It's also within the realm of possibility that some tires work better on certain cars, others not.

Have you looked at the reviews on TireRack? If not, you might want to before you proclaim them garbage. The General's I bought for my kid have reviews totaling 23 million miles. That's way too much data to be dismissed by an engineer like me that worked in the auto industry for 21 years.

[Louis]

I've found that for total price mounted my Subaru dealer beat what it would have cost to have TireRack ship me the tires and have a local shop mount them. Because they were relatively tough to find Yokohamas, not many of the local places could even get them.

Two other comments:

1) The first time I did this (the Impreza's now above 180k miles) the dealer told me that they too ordered them from TireRack. I didn't ask the last time they sold me four more.

2) I'll second what a comment above said about some of the TireRack comments being a bit nutty. For the particular Yokos that came as OEM on the Subie (which I've continued to use because they seem to have a great combination of handling qualities and lifetime) the comments on TR are typically very negative, yet in my experience they're great tires. If one were to decide purely based on the online comments you'd never buy them.

[Ralph]

I'm more interested in getting a good tire balance and wheel alignment than the absolute best price on tires. Wheel alignment equipment [and how often it's recalibrated] and tech experience varies a lot.

[josephr]

TireRack seems like a good idea, but the problem gets to the installers. They don't like putting on tires they didn't sell, so my job was de-priorized and even though TireRack promised balance/mounting, they insisted charging me anyway. I was a sitting duck and they knew it.

Tried my mazda dealership once when they had a sale, but now just do Costco -- good deal on tires, installed per schedule, no hassle, and can get some shopping done while they're at it.

[C40_guy]

Originally Posted by Nessism

Have you looked at the reviews on TireRack? If not, you might want to before you proclaim them garbage. The General's I bought for my kid have reviews totaling 23 million miles. That's way too much data to be dismissed by an engineer like me that worked in the auto industry for 21 years.

You have to consider the bias of the individuals providing that feedback. Many are likely to rate their tire tire selection highly, because that is what they bought. Virtually all of these people have not done back to back comparisons of tires; instead, they, mostly, are posting reviews of tires recently purchased. (Recency bias). There's no objective evaluation of options, just "yea, I just bought them and they're great" (even though green tires take a while to actually get good...)

Consider this: Ratings on GateGuru of restaurants at airports tend to skew towards mediocre branded fast food. It's what the majority of people know and want, and their expectations are confirmed by their experience, which they then document. Yet the food is absolute crap. High fat, high sodium, little choice, nothing interesting, unusual or healthy.

[C40_guy]

For those of us with quattro or other AWD systems, Tire Rack can be a great source of shaved tires.

Lose one tire due to a curb strike or mail at the edge of the tread and you need to match the tread depth to the existing tire on the other side. Tire Rack will shave a tire to the proper tread depth for you.

[Hellgate]

Originally Posted by C40_guy

For those of us with quattro or other AWD systems, Tire Rack can be a great source of shaved tires.



Lose one tire due to a curb strike or mail at the edge of the tread and you need to match the tread depth to the existing tire on the other side. Tire Rack will shave a tire to the proper tread depth for you.

Good to know, thank you.

On the Tire Rack reviews, the key is to look at them over time. Typically a new tire comes out, scores high, and fades quickly over time. That said, the reviews do provide a good overall assessment of a brand, ie: Michelin rate well, Firestone, well, Firestone needs some work.

[AngryScientist]

IMO the only reviews worth looking at on TR are the TR Pro reviews. When Joe Average tells me he likes his truck tires, who cares. If a professional driver on a closed course drives 5 tires back to back on the same car in the same conditions and reports in, you have my attention.