Anything I should know or look out for when buying tires on-line/eBay?

Obviously I will order the right size, just wanted to know if there is anything to look out for.

Thanks,

Matt

 

It's usually not worth it, unless you have mounting equipment to mount them yourself. Place like Goodyear and Sears will pricematch, so find the tires you want online then call up Goodyear or you can call up Sears or go online to their website and ask them to match the price then go down and have 'em install it. Because of the install fees it's usually best to buy tires from someone that does pricematching and then just finding a place that sells the tires you want at the best price is the best bet.

 

yeah i don't have any balancing equipment, I was just assuming I could have a tire shop put them on for me.. Haven't looked into pricing on that yet though.

Thanks,

Matt

 

I used to do tire rack but discount tire/america's tire will match pretty much anything you find if you have one in the area

 

Um no, completely disagree.

A Merchant's Tire near me had their "top of the line" Goodyear F1 for $220 a PIECE.

They're $80 shipped a piece on TireRack and pretty much everywhere only costs $10-20 to have mounted/balanced.

I only use Tirerack

 

** Agreed**^^ Discount tires not bad either, and vulcantires.com is nice as well

 

Don't buy ebay tires, recently purchased Falken tires from ebay and they all leak little by little and eventually get flat in a week. Spent already about $30 on tire fixing things in wal mart.

 

My experience has always been the best with

www.discounttiredirect.com
They will normally price match tirerack and throw in free shipping as a bonus..
Alternatively, www.onlinetires.com can be very cheap but have rather crap customer service...

Finally, if you are going to buy your average 14 or 15" tyre you might be better off in-store, but if buying anything high performance or pricey, online is the way to go...
Also, www.1010tires.com and www.tirerack.com are excellent places to see reviews before purhcasing

 

First off, when did I mention anything about a "A Merchant's Tire"? I don't even know where one is located. Second, I just tried finding those tires for my car at tirerack and they didn't come up. However, using the tires I bought as an example....Goodyear GT, tirerack has em for 71 each so that's 284, plus 46 dollars shipping. That's 330. You have to wait for a week or so to get 'em to your preferred installer then it's 20 each to have 'em installed, plus all the fees, that's over 410, at the very least, I'm not even including fees. Sears.com had 'em for 63 each using a coupon code found on the net, and installed at a Sears center, even though I would have had to wait to have 'em sent there was 400. I called up my local Goodyear and he said he would match that out the door. When I got there he actually chopped that to 390 out the door. Obviously that includes lifetime rotations and balancing. Some installers will charge for that. Yes, I can do my own rotations but I can't balance 'em. So I went down and of course they had 'em in stock and in a couple hours, bang, got my tires on. Also, if you're getting 'em mounted for 10 a tire then you're getting it done by someone you know or a family member because they're not making anything on that. But if you have your own equipment like I said then ya you probably can save buying 'em online.

 

Merchants, Sears, Firestone, Walmart, etc Any of them.

And I misspoke, it was the Eagle GT, which are actually only $68 now.

Your Sears example is no better, and fuzzy math seems to be your friend. Using my friend's for example, it is $272.00 for all four tires, and $42 shipped (with an arrival date of 8/31 or 9/1 from today, not a week). So $314 shipped and I get them tomorrow. $20 plus all the fees? No, it's $20 on the high end at most places (Walmart is $15 here). So then you're looking at under $400, and I could get it done by Tuesday and get a better quality tire than most places stock.

Lifetime rotating and balancing is just silly, if you ever need to rebalance your wheels you've probably damaged the tire regardless. And for some cars (like mine) you are physically unable to rotate due to staggered sizing.

Also, paragraphs are your friend, no one wants to read a huge block of text.

 

OP, check out TireRack.com before you buy anything locally is the moral of the story.

 

If you can find a good shop to mount and balance them, then online is great.

For everyday/normal tires, Costco had the best deal for my accord when I got $100 off a set of 4. Costco also had the best deal on tires for my 1-Ton truck. For my 2006 TL, tirerack crushed the local stores with performance tries and had a WAY larger selection to choose from - bottom line is that I got a better tire at a lower price.

Take the advice above and at least log on and check it out.

 

Of course you misspoke, that's why I had to correct you, which appears to be about par for the course looking ahead.

Fuzzy math, huh. Ok let's see what we got here...

http://www.walmart.com/cp/Tires-Services/495845

Under $400? I don't know what friend you're referring to. Again, using my example for the same tires you're talking about(I don't know what tires you're talking about or where you get that price from, you seem to love comparing apples and oranges, but that's about par for the course as well. I'm guessing you couldn't get your math to work so you decided to just throw a figure out there), that's $330. Tire mount and tire balance, keeping in mind that you'd have to be a moron not to have your tire balanced since no tires comes completely perfectly balanced from the factory and keeping in mind that walmart's lifetime balance is $7.5, comes to $10 each tire, that's $40 more. I assume you're buying new valve stems, that's $8 for four. Tire rotation at a later date is $2.5 per tire or $7.5 for lifetime rotations. Unless you're assuming everyone rotates their own tires, but Goodyear, which I quoted earlier, gives you free lifetime rotations included in my $390 price. I'm not even gonna include the fee for lug nut installation, I don't even know what the hell that is. I'm gonna assume that that's a misprint.
$330
+$40
+$8
+$30
=$408

Assuming you're gonna rotate your tires at 5000 miles that's another 8 dollars, ten times. Or you can just go down to Goodyear and pay less and get a no hassle deal.


I'm not too sure who you think you're dealing with. You're not dealing with some clown. I'm posting to a messageboard not to an english class. I usually just roughly type out what I'm saying. But, if you want to duel with me on fixing grammatical errors, feel free to let me know and you can pick a thread for us to look over and we can see who can find the most amount of errors in the smaller amount of time and duel in the General Discussion forum. I guarantee I will win, 'though.

Thanks for playing and have a nice day.

 

To the OP, the real moral of the story is to make sure you find the best price on the internet and then go down to a place that price matches and ask them to pricematch and get everything done in one day without waiting for anything, having tires sent somewhere, and spending a whole lot more, while at the the same time getting free lifetime rotations and free lifetime balancing. Also, if you have any material defect issues, that also will be hassle free.

 

clearly one of those ppl who while at the shop is always trying to look over the mechanics shoulder. moral of the story is not every place will price match internet only prices(place much have a physical store).........the moral of the story is do your homework and think about if you want to rotate your own tires.....personally i mount and balance my own tires because i have the equipment handy.....as for valve stems...replacing them every time is unnecessary



Goodyear Eagle F1 All Season Tire - 225/45ZR18 95Y XL VSB
(prices as of right now)
SEARS- Tires Only
4Tires
Tire Cost $828.24

Discount Applied - 5.3% $43.60

Environmental Fee $6.00

Handling Charge $7.60

Total (no roadside) $841.84

w/ install(taken from sears website) $917.76
-------------------------------------------------------------

TIRE RACK
4 tires

Tire cost $656.00

Shipping(to nj) $51.42 (arrive by 09/1 - 09/2)

Total $707.42

w/ install still less then $841.84

add road side hazard $78.72 for all 4 tires

total w/ install n roadside less then $917.76
----------------------------------------------------------------



so again before you go bashing someone holmesnmanny do the math....most non big name shops will mount and balance a tire for 25 at most.....and as i said valve stems every time are a waste

 

Explain exactly how I bashed anyone? This I would love to know.

His original post to me was completely disrespectful and out of line. This is the first thread at this board that I have ever had a problem with someone being completely disrespectful towards me.

If you think I'm just gonna act like he's doing me a favor by being a jerkoff, sorry, I don't. If you wanna kiss his ***, go ahead. I don't kiss asses, sorry. I'd rather be helping people out. I do this almost daily here. I see muffinman pull **** like this all the time at this board. Now that he's doing it to me I'm gonna say something.

Lastly, as I said previously in this thread already, if someone has the ability to do all their mounting themselves then it is best to buy from an online retailer, it'll be cheaper that way......if you read it.

 

Also, even Walmart has the tires at $85 a pop (Eagle GT) but wait! They're not even in stock and you have to wait for them to arrive! And that price does not include their tire services, nor does it include disposal fees.

 

If that post was disrespectful, then you're an idiot.

My saying I completely disagree is in no way disrespectful.

My calling you a ****ing toolbag **** sucker would have been disrespectful, but I didn't do that did I?

 

Assuming tires are in stock in your sizing (most decent ones aren't) TireRack would ship them to me the next day (oh noes! One day waiting period?!) And they're cheaper for a better tire.

I'm getting the feeling you work for a local or chain tire shop.....

 

Like I said numerous times, I was comparing my tires and you used someone else's tires as comparison and said somehow I was wrong. Don't compare apples and oranges and then somehow think that helps your logic.

If you were smart you'd see I have my vehicle year make and model in your signature. Go to tirerack and punch that in, then deselect all tires then reselect Goodyear. You'll see the tires are $284. Add 'em to your cart. Then select shipping to 94578. I'm located in California, they are shipping from Las Vegas. Keep this in mind as I will be referring to this later in this post. Anyway, that comes to $330.06. This is for UPS ground shipping, which is your best case scenario in terms of price. Now you can go back and look at the fees I posted from Walmart which you referred to earlier.

If you don't rotate your tires at all, then you are a complete moron. I think anyone at this board will agree. Your front tires will go bald in half the time and you'll be buying new front tires.

There's the right way and the wrong way to respond to someone at a messageboard. If you need help learning how to respect people go learn some netiquette. I would cut you some slack if I was being a jerkoff originally to someone for no reason. Who the fck cares if I'm not putting together my posts according to English 1a standards. You know what I'm saying. I'm not jibber jabbering without any sort of punctuation. Save your self-righteous bs for someone that deserves it. I'm not writing a paper or putting together a thesis. I wasn't, I was giving input to help out another member. I don't care if you disagree with my opinion, but...

...adding that to the beginning of a post before you reply to another member's post means you're looking down on their post. There's a difference between disagreeing and being disrespectful or acting like you're above someone else. Again, go learn some netiquette.

Lastly, getting back to shipping. Let's assume that you order tires at 12.01am and the order somehow gets shipping out at 8.00 am using UPS ground. Let's just assume they get it out for delivery the next day, it still has to go where you had it shipped AND they would still have to call you to go down there unless you waited there the entire day. This is the BEST case scenario. Anyone that knows UPS knows they love coming at 7 o'clock at night and assuming that was the next day and not two days later, you woluld still have to be fit into whereever you had them shipped. The bottom line is that if you're going to a place that pricematches then the price is atleast guaranteed to be the same if not less, without having to wait, one, two, three, or even more days depending on your location and where it's coming from. That is the definition of "price-matching".

At any rate, everything I posted backed up my opinion that it's not only as cheap, if not cheaper, but faster and less of a hassle to go through a brick and mortar store unless you have the ability to get mounting and whatnot done yourself, fee free.

Thanks for playing and have a nice day.

 

You could have called me a deuchbag, but it probably would have had an adverse affect on you, not me. But then again, going by your personality it probably wouldn't have changed anyone's opinion of you.

 

so... lets go with this...

prices are going to vary everywhere you go... walmart, sears, tire discounters, where ever... check your prices online at the places some people have listed and call around to local shops around you... you might find the best deal at a shop or online... you jus have to do your own research and look around

with the sites people have given you i think you'll be able to find the besst price and do good comparisons

 

Since I have to get ready for work.....

Can you tell me how I can rotate wheels with a staggered setup with directional tires? I sure don't know how to do it (I'm physically unable to rotate my tires and they last just fine)

You rotate to even out wear, if your alignment is fine and you don't have any tire wear issues, there is no reason to rotate. No pulling, etc, then there's no reason.

I can read the rest of your post later.

And since it was your last post, it's douchebag, not deuchbag

 

I won't comment too much on where to buy tires, as that can be up to personal opinion and you can get a lot of different info. I will agree with HondaPartsHero and others on tirerack and discountire/americastire having good deals and good service.

Just definitely make sure you have a place that will mount and balance them cheaply. My friend (before consulting me or my friend with a "hook up" at a shop) went and had his Falken's he bought online mounted and balanced at a local shop he uses and they charged him $120!!!

That's a LOT of coin. That's too much coin!

But it makes sense, considering that shop didn't get any money from a tire sale and had to rely on just the mounting and balancing. So just make sure you won't be getting screwed at whatever shop you're at.

 

And I ALWAYS do a four wheel alignment when I change 2 or 4 tyres..
Could just me personally but I prefer to do that than to have uneven wear,..