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Car tire pricing

mbsv

mbsv

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Joined
Jul 16, 2005
Location
SF
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bicycle(s)
Is there some car tire cartel?

I was looking at car tires. Found some I liked.
Normal price $160/tire. A few places a bit more, a few a bit less.

Over the course of a few weeks, there was always someone selling it for about $120 a tire. But it was someone different every week! Dodgy looking online tire dealer. Good looking ones. Places with 4 weeks lead time. Places shipping overnight. Then the next week, their price would return to normal and it would be someone else.

I wonder if are just scraping each-others prices and then making their own offer a week later... or what sort of business idea makes this happen!
 
You know how to read a DOT number on a tire sidewall? It doesn’t usually say the complete number on both sides. But it usually goes two sequences of alphanumerics and then four numbers (or three if it’s super old). Those last four number are the date code. You can see here that this one was manufactured on the 16th week of 2021.

Sometimes when you see prices too good to be true, the seller may be getting rid of old stock. Usually when places like Tire Rack do this, it will specifically say “closeout” in the pricing. And maybe even something like “2018 production” which flat out tells you they’re old tires.
 

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AbsolutEnduser said:
...so what's so wrong with 2018 tires!?!? :) I think mine may be '16 or '15 :later
Click to expand...

In my shop we see many cars with hardly any miles on them. But if the tires are more than 5 years old, I’m recommending them to be replaced.

Belts, tires, wiper blades…all rubber. It dries out, cracks, and hardens over time whether you use it or not.
 
thanks. yeah, I verified, mine are '16, so ~5.5 y.

Quite surprised they, Pirelli Scorpion, seem to have > 44kmi, but maybe also someone else replaced them and took '16 ones anyway
 
I found The Tire Rack to be the cheapest and ship to a local installer. But my installer raised the price from $20 per tire to $40 so now American Tire is on par with Costco for me.
 
TheRobSJ said:
You know how to read a DOT number on a tire sidewall? It doesn’t usually say the complete number on both sides. But it usually goes two sequences of alphanumerics and then four numbers (or three if it’s super old). Those last four number are the date code. You can see here that this one was manufactured on the 16th week of 2021.

Sometimes when you see prices too good to be true, the seller may be getting rid of old stock. Usually when places like Tire Rack do this, it will specifically say “closeout” in the pricing. And maybe even something like “2018 production” which flat out tells you they’re old tires.
Click to expand...

I recently bought two sets of re71 tires from Tire Rack both set were somewhat recent and 78$ a tire I could not be more content (regular price was 225$ I believe) the price was too good to be true :)

I had to get another set of rims to put the tires on hehehe
 
The last time I needed tires I just bought from the local Ford dealer. They were close enough to the tire store prices to not be worth searching for a better deal. The tires on my other Ford were purchased at America's Tire. I'm probably not normal, but all maintenance on both of my cars has been done at Ford dealers. Prices for most things are reasonable, and I know they won't screw anything up.

I would check America's Tire or Discount Tire for pricing.
 
I had to buy tires on our road trip. I bought them in Ohio, made right in Ohio.
Cooper AT3. 275/70/18 at $1325. So I am thinking $160/tire sounds pretty good. The 19” tires on our Audi need changing and I shudder to think what they will cost.
 
Well the tires came in from last week's price leader, walmart. Date code? 3821. I think that's fresh enough.

And today? Same tires are $99 there?!
Tirerack has them on 'close out' for $162 (normal price $165). Oh wait, it's now $159. Yeah prices are clearly being adjusted by some computer!


These are a common size 17" tire... tirerack lists many options from $115 to $215. But yeah, 275/70/18 is about 50% more. But DrSwade... I guess what I'm seeing is to keep your eye out on tires you like for you 19" wheels, maybe it'll show up 40% off too?
 
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ScottRNelson said:
The last time I needed tires I just bought from the local Ford dealer. They were close enough to the tire store prices to not be worth searching for a better deal. The tires on my other Ford were purchased at America's Tire. I'm probably not normal, but all maintenance on both of my cars has been done at Ford dealers. Prices for most things are reasonable, and I know they won't screw anything up.

I would check America's Tire or Discount Tire for pricing.
Click to expand...
There's no reason to expect infallibility from a dealer. Versus jiffy lube, sure, but they're high pressure high productivity environments. A trustworthy independent has just as much, if not more potential to have a lower comeback rate. I've had 2 warranty jobs done on my audi and both times the car came back assembled incorrectly.
 
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kingmoochr said:
There's no reason to expect infallibility from a dealer. Versus jiffy lube, sure, but they're high pressure high productivity environments. A trustworthy independent has just as much, if not more potential to have a lower comeback rate. I've had 2 warranty jobs done on my audi and both times the car came back assembled incorrectly.
Click to expand...
I'm not saying that I like all dealers. I quite liked Folsom Lake Ford and I like Kendall Ford near me. Livermore Ford was just okay. Didn't like the Honda dealer in Dublin very much. Found an independent Honda specialist in Pleasanton when I owned Hondas.

So yeah, if you have a dealer that isn't great, go find an independent that you can trust.
 
kingmoochr said:
There's no reason to expect infallibility from a dealer. Versus jiffy lube, sure, but they're high pressure high productivity environments. A trustworthy independent has just as much, if not more potential to have a lower comeback rate. I've had 2 warranty jobs done on my audi and both times the car came back assembled incorrectly.
Click to expand...

Derailing from tires here but oh well.

The manufacturer pays us hardly anything for warranty work. For diagnosis, they pay us just enough time to hook up the scan tool and read the codes. Actual pinpoint diagnosis beyond that? They make you fight them tooth and nail for any of that time, and you might be lucky to get half of it. The repair itself? On average, nobody gets paid enough time to do the job the way they say. So of course it’s no surprise you’ll get technicians cutting corners and doing shoddy work as to not go so far in the hole time wise. Test drive after repairs to make sure it’s actually fixed? Nope they don’t pay for that either.

My wife’s Audi had some recall thing done which is of course warranty work. The whole front end of her SQ5 had to be removed to do whatever it was. So of course they fucked something up. I wound up fixing it myself rather than have her take it back to them.
 
ScottRNelson said:
I'm not saying that I like all dealers. I quite liked Folsom Lake Ford and I like Kendall Ford near me. Livermore Ford was just okay. Didn't like the Honda dealer in Dublin very much. Found an independent Honda specialist in Pleasanton when I owned Hondas.

So yeah, if you have a dealer that isn't great, go find an independent that you can trust.
Click to expand...

Not all dealers are equal. Story time!

I’m sure you know of Honda and the Takata airbag recalls. Well a particular Honda dealer in that neck of the woods apparently installed a bunch of the inflators (the pyrotechnic device which is essentially a controlled bomb behind the actual airbag) backwards. Hundreds of them. Despite one way only tabs on the device, and it would be obvious that things weren’t right as a bracket would bend if you tried to put it in backwards. So in an accident when it’s supposed to direct all the energy into inflating the bag, it went into the dashboard. It was the passenger side bag which is much bigger. So on top of an airbag that fails to deploy, now you exploded half the dashboard.

Needless to say, Honda recalled all those cars again. And since they just didn’t know how many were done incorrectly or if other dealers were that epically stupid, they recalled all the cars nationwide. And now the technician to take a picture of your inflator installation and submit it to Honda with the warranty claim.
 
TheRobSJ said:
Derailing from tires here but oh well.

The manufacturer pays us hardly anything for warranty work. For diagnosis, they pay us just enough time to hook up the scan tool and read the codes. Actual pinpoint diagnosis beyond that? They make you fight them tooth and nail for any of that time, and you might be lucky to get half of it. The repair itself? On average, nobody gets paid enough time to do the job the way they say. So of course it’s no surprise you’ll get technicians cutting corners and doing shoddy work as to not go so far in the hole time wise. Test drive after repairs to make sure it’s actually fixed? Nope they don’t pay for that either.

My wife’s Audi had some recall thing done which is of course warranty work. The whole front end of her SQ5 had to be removed to do whatever it was. So of course they fucked something up. I wound up fixing it myself rather than have her take it back to them.
Click to expand...

I had to remove damn near the whole front of my Q5 just to remove headlight assembly. It was quickly obvious that few of the fasteners were authentic VW/Audi. Buy a used car and it’s “like a box of chocolates…”.

In 2015 my 2010 Tundra went into limp mide and required a bunch of new smog equipment. Apoarently common enough to extend smog equip warranty to 130k they said. I asked the guy to give the truck a good once or twice over as it had spend most of it’s life in Mexico and shitty roads.
The guy came back saying it had a leaking propeller/output shaft seal.
I asked how long it would take to fix and he quoted 2.5 hours.
So I told him to fix it….it’s under warranty. He gave me the runaround about what warranty I purchased, some sold with the car new are 3rd party…just blah blah blah. I whipped out my Platinum Pimp Plan folder from Toyota. You could see the defeat on his face.
So off it went for repairs. I shit you not, he called me in 30 minutes later and said it was done. Stupid me, I took his word for it and didn’t crawl under the truck.
Recently I was under the truck and see the shaft seal is leaking. Makesme wonder.
And people say I have trust issues.
 
Audi loves to use a melange of various fasteners for a single component. Try removing an under shield and you need a T20, T30, a Phillips screwdriver, and something to release plastic rivets.
 
DrSwade said:
I had to remove damn near the whole front of my Q5 just to remove headlight assembly. It was quickly obvious that few of the fasteners were authentic VW/Audi. Buy a used car and it’s “like a box of chocolates…”.

In 2015 my 2010 Tundra went into limp mide and required a bunch of new smog equipment. Apoarently common enough to extend smog equip warranty to 130k they said. I asked the guy to give the truck a good once or twice over as it had spend most of it’s life in Mexico and shitty roads.
The guy came back saying it had a leaking propeller/output shaft seal.
I asked how long it would take to fix and he quoted 2.5 hours.
So I told him to fix it….it’s under warranty. He gave me the runaround about what warranty I purchased, some sold with the car new are 3rd party…just blah blah blah. I whipped out my Platinum Pimp Plan folder from Toyota. You could see the defeat on his face.
So off it went for repairs. I shit you not, he called me in 30 minutes later and said it was done. Stupid me, I took his word for it and didn’t crawl under the truck.
Recently I was under the truck and see the shaft seal is leaking. Makesme wonder.
And people say I have trust issues.
Click to expand...

And they probably only got paid 3/10th of an hour to do it under warranty labor time. If they even did it, apparently since it’s still leaking.

Many dealer shops “overbid” time when it’s on the customer’s dime. Greed yes, but also to offset how much they lose on warranty.

Before you think we’ll just dealer for warranty and then off to my not so greedy independent to do the rest, I see plenty of indies overbid too.

And there are some warranty jobs that are absolutely a waste of time. There’s one my manufacturer has where if there’s a leak from the timing cover they make you take the engine out, separate from the transmission, take off the oil pan…it’s a massive job. They make you do it. They want pictures submitted that you in fact did all of that. Takes most guys about 40 hours or so to do. We get paid about 26 from the manufacturer. Yay big loser job. However, if we were allowed to fix it the way where we don’t pull the engine out? We’d charge the customer 2.5 hours. And it takes most of us 1.5-2 hours to actually do. Perfectly fine repair and your car wasn’t in a shop for almost two weeks.
 
Abacinator said:
Audi loves to use a melange of various fasteners for a single component. Try removing an under shield and you need a T20, T30, a Phillips screwdriver, and something to release plastic rivets.
Click to expand...

Don’t forget E10 and E…well a lot of those reverse torx ones. Plus a handful of triple squares. Sigh. Fucking German shit. I miss Hondas where a 8,10,12,14, and 17 can take apart 80% of the whole damn car.
 
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