My daughter had a set of new snow tires a little more than a year ago, and they started to cup on…read morethe outside front. This was on a brand new 2022 honda with suspension clean enough you could eat off it. The alignment was such that they quickly starting cupping and by the time she noticed it, it was enough to see the damage.... so damage was already done. Her 2022 Honda Civic should have been crazy easy to align and balance. I just bought a brand new top of the line set of rubber for $1,200 in March 2025, and my prior tires were worn with low tread but literally perfect, not a trace of wobble from 50-80mph, and not a trace of uneven wear. Literally not a trace of uneven wear. The new set had a significant wobble as soon as I left. I brought the vehicle back a couple weeks later they claimed to adj the balance and adjusted the alignment. The Ford Edge still wobbles, characteristic of a bad balance job, so it feels perfect up to 55 or so then it wobbles up to 75 then it feels like no wobble. So it is definitely not balanced. My front tire now has a road sound that is not crazy loud, but I can hear it, so it is not aligned or balanced or some mix thereof. The sound is characteristic of toe being off, I think. The car still wobbles around 55-70mph, so bad it makes papers in my truck violently shake. I then bought a gravity alignmment tool at Harbor Freight, and checked my wheels balance at home. And sure enough, two wheels were significantly out of balance. I took the ford edge immediately to a Ford Dealership and said nothing for history, just it shakes a tiny bit and had a road noise that should not be there, and they adjusted my alignment which was totally off. The dealership showed the before and after. Front wheels are supposed to barely turn to the inside, common knowledge. Not perfectly straight on and not barely to the outside. My front right was barely adjusted to go to the outside. The VIP tech did not understand alignments, and someone adjusted one wheel in the wrong direction. When TODD was at Topsham, this was a well run ship, I always had spot on alignments with Gary the tech at the time, and never ever had severe balance issues. The VIP when the manager was Todd was awesome. The VIP with no manager named Todd is not good. The new manager and techs are not trained to be expert, they do not perform at an expert level, and should not be advertises as professional, tires are really expensive and between Katies set and my new set, the techs incompetence is really costing us. We will be looking around to go elsewhere and will spread to word to avoid VIP for now in Topsham for seemingly shoddy work. the video shows 4 seconds slow highway speed on rt 196 in a section with no bumps, cracks or potholes, see how crazy the paper wiggles. Ugh. Very disappointed.
Update, the front right wheel was a whopping 1oz off. No wonder it wobbled. This was after two visits in a row to have vip the new tires they put on, the second they balanced them one was 1oz off. Dan Foshays in Hallowell repaired it correctly w road test balancing and the youngest tech in that place looked like 40, their office (dan Foshays) had 25 sq feet of certifications included a thank you from the BBB.
