As it seems Bob's only receives 1 review on average a year, it's too bad we have to be the first to leave a negative one, but our experience was nothing short of horrendous in our opinions. We've purchased tires here twice now, most recently last May and had had a decent enough experience until now. While their prices are great and they boast about their old school balancing methods, we'll no longer give them our business or recommend them as we have in the past.
As I mentioned, we purchased tires (2) back in May and purchased, as we have in the past, the additional warranty they push verbally when you check out. Less than a year later we noticed really bag shaking while driving and the dealership noticed something funky with our tires when we brought it in (we always have the dealership do our work aside from purchasing tires as we have a newer car). They ran some extensive diagnostics and found that both tires (one more than the other) were super egg shaped. We went back to Bob's with our super detailed, diagram and image filled paperwork in-hand (which they quickly told us they wouldn't even look at because it didn't come from them), proceeded to try for over an hour to balance our tires, then told us one tire was basically fine and the second was a bit odd shaped. They argued a bit about replacing both (we have awd, you can't just replace 1 tire EVER and both tires had a defect anyway) and then they finally agreed to get replacements for both and replace them within a couple days. Went in today (Friday) to get them replaced and suddenly were told there would be a $100 fee because "the tires were a bit worn". Well yes, they're nearly a year old and we do tend to actually drive our car, but they're still covered by your warranty/manufacturer's warranty, which never mentioned prorated fees for replacing them once you drove off the lot with them. Generally when you have tires put on your car you're going to drive on them and a manufacturer's defect has nothing to do with use. They then tried to argue we should have brought our car back right after they mounted them. We told them exactly what our dealership told us, that issues like this tend to present themselves over time. We brought our car into the dealership the moment we noticed the shaking, turns out it wasn't our alignment, it was egg shaped tires!
My husband was there for a long time while they argued this, made a few phone calls and finally said they'd give us the tires since they WERE covered (finally!) but we'd have to pay for mounting and balance since Goodyear/Dunlop wouldn't cover this--apparently they don't stand behind their products enough to offer this service when there is a defect? My husband told them we'd take the tires and have our dealership do it, so now he's had to spend over an hour at Bob's, drive to the dealership (who graciously mounted and balanced them for us for free because they were super sympathetic that we ended up with defective tires and we're regulars), then drive BACK to Bob's to give them the defective tires next Monday when they're open next so they can get reimbursed... If I'd had my way they'd have to go pick them up from our dealership themselves on their dime to make up for some of this headache, wasted gas and wasted time away from work, but what can you do?
Needless to say, this entire thing could have been avoided if they'd simply stood behind the products they used and replaced them without the arguments and general run-around. They also could have been upfront with us when we were there last time about the fact they'd charge us $100 for the replacement--which they NEVER mentioned. Yes, if you're looking for cheap tires they offer good prices--no denying that. And sadly before now, we found them a bit slow, but decent otherwise. However, we've always found having our dealership balance our tires resulted in a better ride than Bob's anyway and clearly they don't want to actually stand behind what they sell so ... why risk dealing with something like this? read more
