Friday, May 12, 2006

The list

Well Kal-tire is dangerously close to making the list. The list of companies that I will not do business with. Who is on this list so far? Sobey's and Sony. We all know why Sony is on the list. Cue wavey flashback effect.

It all started yesterday when I decided it was time to put my summer tires and rims on my car. It was a day like any other so I'm not sure what made me decide this but I wanted to be kind to my winter tires and get them off before the warm weather. I leave early that morning so I can drop my car off and walk to work and everything seems normal. They are going to swap my tires for me and I'll pick them up after work. The walk to work was ok except that like normal Jordan passed me and didn't offer me a ride but its only 5 blocks so I am not too concerned. Rory was kind enough to give me a ride to Kal-tire after work so I could pick my car up. I hop in it and it is pulling the left a bit, well I'm not used to the tires I tell myself, they do like to follow the ruts in the road. By the time I get to Circle and C I don't think this is right so I stop for gas and check my tire. It has less than 10 pounds of air in it, not good considering how short the sidewall is. I filled up with gas and air and went home thinking it must just be a rim leak. Over supper the tire looses 2 pounds of air so I think that my suspicions were valid and let it sit overnight to re-check it in the morning. Morning comes and I get up 30 mins early to change the tire but discover that it is sitting at 30 psi so it only lost 4 psi all night. Hmmm... if the tire was almost flat at Kal-tire after sitting in their lot for 8 hours then why didn't it go flat after 14 hours of sitting in my driveway? I'm beginning to think they didn't check the tire pressure when they installed it. I feel this is a big safety issue. Not only can I be injured but it could also do a lot of damage. To their credit they did fix it for free but they got very defensive when I claimed that they didn't check the air pressure.

"Oh well it may have been fine until the car sat on it and changed the shape of the tire"

I didn't feel like getting in an argument with the guy because I can't prove they did anything wrong and he can't prove they didn't. Atleast there doesn't appear to be any damage to the tire or the rim.

I have trouble hating a company that does so much free stuff for me. Everyone gets a free rotation every year and free balancing. They fixed my truck tire which I didn't even buy from there. If the people in the back shop cared as much as the people up front it would be a great place. What can you expect from a bunch of people making 8 bucks an hour to patch and balance tires. They just can't be bothered.

In the end I will continue to shop there but I can't recommend anyone else to start shopping there. I'll probably take my truck somewhere else when it needs tires to see if anyone else is any better. Its a pity really.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hate nothing more than trusting my car to someone else and having them mess it up.

I've heard good stories about Kal-Tire so maybe it was just an anomoly, but who knows.

What kind of car are you driving?

Zack said...

They are good to deal with but they don't really pay attention to the details. Maybe I just have bad luck.

I drive a 92 VW Jetta