I had a terrible experience. I was trying to save some money on installing tires, so I hit this place up, as they only wanted $15 per tire.
This price included mounting, balancing, and installing the valve stems that I bought brand new.
When I arrived I should have turned right back when I saw a guy working on a car with nothing but the hydraulic jack (the same type you use to manually jack up your car to swap the tires out). This is unsafe. At minimum you need a jack stand, and preferably stack a tire or two under the car in case the car slips off the stand. A hydraulic jack can fail at any time, crushing the person underneath.
The next fail point was when they jacked up my car. First, he almost jacked it up from 'wherever', not even looking under the car for the jack point. Not acceptable for a Mercedes. You must only jack up the car from the approved jack point, at where there is a jack pad. Had I let him continue, he would have either cracked my rocker panel, or the plastic under-car belly pan which runs the length of the car. I had to tell him where to jack it from, and he didn't like that.
Next, he actually jacked up the other side of the car with another jack. This was a bad move, and I tried to complain but he brushed me off--I got mad when he did this. Now the entire front end of the car is up on two jacks. You may think this is nothing, but it's an unsafe move. I can understand one jack with no one crawling under it, but not two.
I handed the guy two brand new valve stems to use. When I got the wheel back with the tire installed, I removed the valve stem cap. He didn't use the new valve stem I had handed him. When I complained about this, he got mad. I told him it's okay, just give me the new valve stem back. He offered to put the new one on at that point. I accepted, and he removed the new tire, put on the new valve stem, and re-installed the tire. However, after he did so, he didn't do the balancing again. He used the balancing weights from the previous tire install. Everyone knows that the moment you remove a tire and re-install the same one or another one, you have to do another balance. When I pointed this out, he got mad.
He finally re-balanced the tire, and ended up doing double the work for his failure to simply install the new valve stem. Not my problem, I only wanted what I wanted. Actually when he didn't install the valve stem and gave me a hard time, I decided this guy is not going to install the rear tires for me, which I had in my storage unit. I was going to go back to storage and pick up the rear tires, but decided not to do it.
By the way, this guy made me wait in the cold for 45 minutes. I never had to wait that long for a couple tires. Clearly they were in no hurry to help me out, even though I arrived before other (Spanish-speaking) customers.
When it was time to pay, I gave him the money, but complained again about the key points of the above. I told him I'm not going to come back here for the rear wheels. The Guatemalan guy--the owner of the business and the ring-leader of the crew of five 20-25 year old guys who work here using unsafe methods and practices, decided to tell me "I am happy to not have you as a customer. I make a lot of money every day doing tires. I don't need your business." I was astounded at the comment, because I made all my complaints factually with no emotion, but he decided to take it to that level.
UNBELIEVABLE!: After I paid, I took one (1) of my two used tires back from the installer guy, so I could use it later on in case I blew a tire. He put that tire in the trunk of my car for me. I intended to keep it in storage. When I arrived at my storage unit to put the tire in my locker, I noticed that my good used tire (even though I removed it in favor of new tires, it was still good enough to use as a spare) was CUT BY A KNIFE. It was a four inch cut. The guy had cu the tire I told him to keep for me, after I made a few complaints. I will attach pictures shortly
My recommendation is to go to another tire shop. This road is full of them. I went to another tire shop for the rear wheels and two additional wheels that I had in storage. It was right up the road from here, behind what looks like a home, up a gravel driveway. It looked sketch but when I drove up to the shop it looked good and legit. This other tire shop charged me $20 for each tire and was provided me good service and he did it fast. Something to think about. read more