A couple days ago I called to make an appointment at barnsley tire. This appointment was for an alignment. When I was on the phone talking to an employee I explained that my car had negative camber on the wheels, which I run for my summer set.
The time had come to put my winter tires on, so I had to remove the camber. I explained to the employee that I had camber plates and that they would need to set the camber back to normal before aligning the car.
So my appointment comes around on Wednesday, at 3 PM. I show up early, drop the car off, explain the camber thing again to the guy at the desk, to which he responds "great, we'll give you a call when its ready."
5:25 PM rolls around, 5 minutes before closing time for barnsley. I expected to have a call by this time, but never received one. So I call them to check on the status of my car. They proceed to put me on hold for 7 minutes (I only know this because phones keep track of how long conversations last) which is a lot longer than it seems when you are sitting there waiting for someone to simple pick up the phone and tell me where my car is.
Like I said, 7 minutes later they finally pick up the phone and tell me "Hey, you can come pick up your car now. We weren't able to do anything to it, but we put it on the rack to check that the toe and everything was set right." Confused, I asked what he meant by 'weren't able to do anything to it' to which he responded "You have really low camber on your car, to adjust that you need adjustable control arms"
Surprised at what he said, I proceeded to tell him I had CAMBER PLATES to adjust the camber, which for anyone who knows anything about cars knows that that is the most straightforward, safe, and quite frankly easiest way to adjust camber. The man told me his tech 'didn't think he could get the camber any lower with how it was set up.'
This is moronic in various ways, I won't even go into it. Basically Barnsley took my car after I explained to them what needed to be adjusted, they gave me the OK twice, once on the phone and once in person, then proceeded to do absolutely NOTHING to the car, seemingly out of incompetence. They held the car for nearly three hours without calling me to tell me they were unable to align my car. I had to reach out to them to find out what was going on.
I then arrived to pick my car up and the man at the front desk repetitively explained how his tech couldn't work on my car. I explained to him that I had camber plates, and part that is designed to easily adjust camber. He had no clue what I was saying, and kept telling me about adjustable control arms.
This shop wasted my time, displayed lack of expertise in their field, and a lack of respect to their customer. If you're going to barnsley tire at all, better make it for something extremely simple, such as changing your tires or getting your wheels balanced. It seems this place caters to clueless customers who hand their keys over and have no knowledge of cars besides that they move when you press the gas pedal.
Not sure why they have such a stellar rep of reviews, but it seems as if the majority are fabricated to create a false sense of professionalism.
Do not go here unless you are simply changing your tires, a task anybody could do if it weren't for a special machine needed. Clueless soccer moms and easy targets to take advantage of seems to be this shops target market. read more
