I'm interested in people's experiences with this site.

I think their prices are nothing special, my local shops can meet or beat their prices on most wheels, tires are all over the place - they can beat some, are much higher on others.

Let me know - good, bad, or otherwise!

 

I've dealt with them several times. Back before Internet shopping became available, they were one of the best mail order sites. I will always check with them to find out if local prices are reasonable or not. Irregardless, I have always found them a very reliable source of information.

If you can get better prices at local stores than that's good for you. I'm not sure everyone in the country has the same option.

BTW, Several of their principals are active in all forms of racing. They do know tires, wheels, offsets, and all other factors of fitment.

 

I just ordered my H&R Sport springs from them on Monday night. They were very prompt on e-mails and shipping I should get them on Monday. I will post again and let you know about shipping promptness and also condition of products.

Kegrun

 

The Tirerack is great as far as price and service go. I ordered a set of wheels w/ tires a while back and got them before they promised them.

The problem I'm have now is that I ordered a new set of tires to mount on the wheels, but nobody in town will do it for me. They say they won't mount them because I didn't buy the tires from them or because they'll scratch the wheels because they're to wide (like 8" is wide) of a custom wheel or the tires are too low of profile (235/45). It's such b.s. What do they do when someone with a 911 comes in? I even called one of the places listed on the Tirerack site that they said will do work for they're customers. He just said no.

 

I ordered snow tires in 1996 & some Borbet wheels for my 1994 ACCORD from them. I also got winter tires last year for my 2000TL. I used one of the shops in their sites that was near by to mount them.

 

Their warehouse is about 15 minutes from my house. Saves on shipping, but I have yet to ever pay for aftermarket wheels. They're a customer of my company, it's funny when you pull in the parking lot as so many of the employee's cars have custom wheels!

 

I bought from them a couple years ago, the prices were the best i saw anywhere! Plus they were shipped promptly and arrived as described!

 

I've bought from them twice, and they've beat the best quote I've been able get locally both times even with the shipping and installation charges added in.

NTB in Chicago installed the tires both times for me.

The first time I purchased tires from them about five years ago was my first ever on line Internet purchase. Been hooked ever since.

 

NO TAXES!!!!!!

I have bought all my tires from em for the past 2 years, cheaper than anybody period. In Atlanta there are high-poerformace shops that have no prob. mounting them.

 

I've ordered from them once and never again. The tires that I've got was so old it smelled like s*it and cracks all over. So I returned it. I lost money on shipping charges. I say never again.

 

Hey REDLINED

I feel ya dawg. My brotha went thru that ordeal. It fawkin sux. Anyhow, often enough, a performance shop will do it for you, or performance wheel shop...know what I mean.

Good luck.

 

Do you have to do balancing and alignment when you buy your new wheels?

 

FWIW, I bought a set of tires from Discount Tire's website (direct sales) and had no problems. I'm not sure how the selection of tires/wheels compares w/ TireRack, though. I believe DT currently has free shipping right now, too.

 

Don't be fooled by Discount Tire Direct's "free shipping". I have been checking their site recently and they bumped up everything in their site an average $10 per item. There's your "free shipping"!

 

I looked back at my invoice from Nov'01, and the tires I bought for my MR2 were $5 less for the fronts and $1 more for the rears. Since the shipping charge was $25, the net savings now would be $17. Still not bad, I suppose.

 

I was supposed to recieve my springs on Monday and I recieved them today!! I am getting my car lowered tomorrow morning. I cant wait. Tire rack.com all the way!!!!

Kegrun

 

Check the manufacturer date on the sidewalls--usually given as week and year of build; it is somewhat difficult to find and even more cryptic to decipher but it's there. Some tire dealers are notorious for selling "new" tires which have been sitting around in b-stock for quite some time. And please, no comments about how an unused 1+ year old new tire is just as sound as one that has been sitting around for no more than a few months. Even unused tires can be affected by environmental factors...IOW, such tires do age, too.

Tony

 

My only experience was awesome. They had the best prices for the tires I wanted for my wife's minivan. Unlike TDOH, they were in first-rate, perfect, brand new condition. The best part was this though:

I had them shipped to one of their recommended installers (who since has become my regular wrench as they do excellent work for cheap, and are cool guys to boot.) Anyways, a couple of weeks after I placed my order, I got a survey e-mailed to me from the TR about the whole experience, including that with their recommended installer. So I give great marks all around, but I mention that the installer could have contacted me a little sooner as they had waited almost a week before letting me know that they had rec'd my tires. Mind you, I wasn't bashing them at all or complaining - like I said, he is now my regular mechanic. I just figured I'd mention it because well, they asked for honest feedback.

About a week later, I receive a nice surprise from the TR. They sent me, totally unsolicited or expected, one of those Acutire digital tire gauges. And not a cheap one either, but the $25 LED one with the case ! (and a note of apology).


Sorry, I meant to compare my experience to MaterLee's, not TDOH's

 

Thanks for all the great feedback! I've been trying to get them to come down a bit on a wheel and tire package, but they won't budge. But if the service is as good as detailed here, I may just pay what they're asking :-)

 

Sure, Tireracks prices are amazing.

But just do the simple math.

Their tires are usually $10-$20 cheaper than locally, BUT. Shipping for 4 tires will run you close to $30. Then you still got to lug the tires to a tire shop to get them installed. Wheel balance and mounting will cost you another $50-60.

I honestly thing that it is much better to go to your local tire shop where the tires are definately more expensive, but they won't kill you on shipping and they will give you a break on the installation since you got the tires from them.

Also waiting for tires to arrive and go through the hassle if there is a problem with the order just isn't worth it man.

In my opinion, you will not save money by ordering from tirerack or any other online tire shop in the long run. The only single reason why you should order tires online is if there are some tires that you ABSOLUTELY want and can't get them locally.


Peace

 

Daverman,

Yeah you would have to do a wheel balancing everytime you buy new tires, change tires etc. etc.

Actually it is recommended to do wheel balancing every three months. But really I do them about every 6 months.

Every time you hit a pot hole or something like that, it f#cks up your wheels, and if your tires aren't correctly balanced you will not have the smoothest ride and you will not get the best milage out of your car.

 

I'd love to go to Tirerack or any other online place to order tires but all of the chain shops I've been to around here (Western MA) won't mount tires that aren't purchased through them. They always give the same standard line "We can't guarantee the integrity of the tire from another source other than our own distributors so we won't risk our customer's lives by mounting a tire we don't know from where it came." Even if you tell them Tirerack supplied the tires, they say no because they don't know if Tirerack bought them as factory seconds or whatnot. I think it's a load of crap because they want you to buy the tires through them.

In addition, a couple of the lesser known places that would do it wouldn't extend their normal road hazard guarantee to tires not purchased through them. What a crock!!

 

I can see why some place wouldn't be comfortable offering or applying something like a road hazard guarantee to tires not directly sold by them. Whether they choose to offer road hazard on carry-in tires is their choice anyway--I'm no consumer expert but I would imagine that stores are probably under no legal obligation to offer tire road hazard protection on all tires regardless of whether they were bought in-house or carry-ins.

Not the best example but...let's say you bought a Comptech swaybar from ACP and you had a speedshop install it; would the speedshop be expected to offer some sort of warranty or guarantee for repair or replacement if let's say one of the swaybar bushings or brackets went bad as a result of anything other than the speedshop's installation of such, whereas they may offer such a warranty on any of their other non-Comptech ones?

Tony

 

I guess I should have been more specific. When I needed replacement tires for my '97 Maxima SE I wanted to get the Dunlop SP Sport 5000s Z-rated (which I did eventually get and love!). My local chain carries the *exact same* tire and offers the road hazard guarantee on it, but wouldn't extend it to mine if I bought them through Tirerack. I agree 100% with you that no place should be obligated to honor someone else's warranty if they don't carry the part (like your Comptech example). But when they are an authorized Dunlop reseller and carry the exact same model and size tire I want, it seems kinda silly.

 

Go to Sears. I've bought two or three sets through the tire rack. I've had excellent results (nice to be able to view the reviews about the tire).

The last time I went to Sears with tires they charged about $7/tire for mounting and balancing.

 

Cool. Never thought of them. There's a relatively new (and large, completely separate building) Sears Auto Center about 15 minutes from my house. That's what I'll do when I finally get sick of the OEM Michelins.

 

Yeah, these small shops don't know what they're missing...

Everybody knows that when you get new tires installed there will usually be other things that you want done to the car. Personally, I always also get an alignment when I get new tires.

They're really rejecting good business.

 

I agree that it does seem kind of silly, at least from a practical standpoint. I'm not saying that what you're requesting isn't unreasonable, just that you gotta see it from the reseller's POV too.

Here's another poor example--let's say you buy a brand X laptop, model # ABC, from ChumpUSA (I mean CompUSA), and decide that you want to (or would rather) purchase an extended warranty for it from Worst Buy (I mean Best Buy), which also carries the exact brand and model laptop. Now, I may be wrong but I don't think that Best Buy would sell you their extended warranty on a product that you didn't buy from them. Of course, this would sound silly strictly from a profit standpoint since why would they not want to sell you something (the warranty) that they can make money off of; however, I would think that there may be insurance guidelines (extended warranties are usually more or less underwritten by insurance companies that specialize in consumer products, among other things, rather than something that is serviced entirely within the company itself) regarding claims on a product which wasn't bought from the store in question.

Tony