THINK TWICE ABOUT GOING HERE!!!
When I found a nail in one of the tires on my husband's Jeep, I took it to Northwest Tire (Bismarck Expressway location), thinking that I'd get better service at a smaller, regional business rather than a nationwide chain store. Boy, was I wrong!
My experience started off great, I was greeted immediately and one of the mechanics took the Jeep into the shop right away. After about 20 minutes, the desk clerk walked over and informed me that the nail had damaged the sidewall of the tire, rendering it irreparable. I questioned this, as I'd seen where the nail was embedded in the tire tread, about two inches in from the exterior edge. I said it looked like the nail had gone straight in (at about 90 degrees) and that it would've had to enter the tire at quite a strange angle in order to hit the sidewall. The young man assured me that I was mistaken, the tire was beyond repair. He also said that he'd never heard of that particular brand of tire before, and couldn't find it anywhere (which I thought was a little fishy, since a quick Google search on my cell phone gave me multiple online sources, but whatever). He went on to say that what's worse, we couldn't put only one new tire on because the diameter would be too different from the three older tires. Since the Jeep is AWD, this could cause serious problems with the differential (this is actually true). He then showed me a few different tires that he recommended, the least expensive of which were around $800, not including the cost of mounting and balancing.
I told the clerk that I'd need to discuss this with my husband, and asked him to put the spare tire on for the time being. He agreed to do that, and was very friendly and polite about it. He even printed out some estimates for my husband to look at as we chatted about our weekend plans!
Understandably so, the hubs was less than thrilled at the prospect of buying new tires, since he didn't even have 20,000 miles on his current tires. Later that week, I took his tire back to our hometown tire shop (American Tire in Grand Forks) where he'd purchased the tires just last year. I explained what I'd been told at Northwest Tire in Bismarck and asked them to take a look at the old tire. One of the guys took it into the shop. He came back less than five minutes later, newly patched tire in hand. He refused to let me pay for anything, saying that it had only taken a couple of minutes! How's that for good customer service?!
My husband put that "irreparable" tire back on his Jeep three months ago, and he hasn't had any problems with it since!
I would love to believe that everyone in this world is honest and trustworthy, but clearly I know better. I just can't believe that these people jumped at the opportunity to sell me $800 worth of tires and probably $200 worth of labor, knowing full well that those expenditures weren't necessary! I will definitely be taking my business elsewhere from now on! read more
