Last week, I was tweeting about a nail that I found in my wife's tire, which really pissed me off, but allowed me to form a new happy relationship with my tire pressure sensor light.  Well, this past weekend I went to have the tire repaired and thought I would share my experience with you.  Now, let me begin by providing some background about the nail.  It was in the driver side rear tire, on the outside edge of the tread.  I have plugged many tires in my day, and looking at this nail's placement, I knew it was going to be a close call from saying it's too near to the sidewall which would then makine the problem un-repairable.

 

Let me back up a little further, always have a tire repair be a patch and not just a plug.  The difference is: when patching a tire, the tire is removed from the rim and a patch is installed on the inside of the tire covering about a 2x2 inch radius around the hole.  This repair lasts much longer and is much more reliable than a plug, which is a piece of material (I think its elephant crap or something) that is rammed through the hole from the outside and may or may not fall out after a period of time.

 

Back to my story; I have a great relationship with the dealership I used to work for, but on this particular day I didn't want to go out of my way to see them.  So I visited a Discount Tire near by.  When I arrived and explained to the service writer my nail dilemma, he very politely explained that they would be able to take care of it right away and asked to come with me to take a look.  As we walked to my car I asked him how much this will set me back and he told me NOTHING!  He said they would take care of it for FREE!  I was blown away at how wonderful this marketing scheme was; I mean, for FREE.  I would have gladly paid upwards of $20-$30 for this repair, but in all efforts to win my future business, this beautiful, well spoken, man who smelled of Brut was offering to fix my headache on the house.

 

Then.....we got to my car and he saw that the nail was too close to the sidewall which meant....yup, you guessed it....this musky smelling gentleman was about to sell me a tire, and not just a new tire, he was pitching for replacing all four tires on my 2008 CRV with 15,000 miles on it.  Clever, very clever.

 

Needless to say, I quickly thanked him for his offer and drove off knowing that my auto world connections would provide me a new tire at half the price he was going to sell one to me for.  In the end, I was impressed and felt a sense of satisfaction knowing that Discount Tire is stepping up to the plate and providing value first.

 

 

One last thought, you may be thinking: Chris - if you have repaired all these tires before, why don't you just fix your own tire.  My answer to you is simple, read my past posts, I HATE working on my own cars and I would pay full price to have someone else do it before I get my nails dirty every again.

 

Thanks for reading....