Just wanted to vent…… I noticed a screw in my tire while at lunch yesterday and after looking around on the net for a tire place and not getting anyone on the phone – I decided I would just go to the Hibdon’s Tire Plus on 23rd which is close to my house. I just moved into the city and used to have a really good tire place in Newcastle that I used all the time.

Anyway, I took 2 hours of annual leave to get my tire fixed. The guy came out and looked at my tire on the car and told me that they would fix it for free, but it was going to take 2 hours to do it. I didn’t realize that they would fix a tire not bought from them for free. I already had the time off so I agreed to wait.

Well, 2 hours later they finally get to my car and tell me that I don’t have enough tread on my tire to fix it. He tried to tell me that it would be grinding into the belts if they tried to patch it, but they can sell me a new tire. I’m not sure how much of a moron he takes me for, but I’ve watched tires be patched on the inside for over 20 years of getting nails and whatnot. It’s got not a thing to do with how much tread is on the outside of the tire. The patch is applied on the inside!

When I tell him the patch is going to go on the inside and ask what it matters of the tread depth – he insists on his story about the belts or whatever. At this point I am trying to not blow up and ask him to just put it back together. He mentions that maybe I can find someone to ‘plug’ the tire.

So, I know he wasn’t talking about ‘plugging’ it in the first place. I saw them patching tires from the inside several times while sitting there.

Then I get home and find that they didn’t replace the center cap on my custom wheel and I had to go back over there to pick it up.

Basically, the ‘free’ flat fix is a ploy to sucker people into doing business with them…… I fully realize that my tire is getting thin, but I don’t need to have some tire guy try to jerk me around with a bs story on why they ‘can’t’ fix it. If it were a safety issue then just say that you won’t do it because the tread is too thin for them to accept responsibility to repair it. Don’t try to tell me that you ‘can’t’ fix it and expect that I’m going to buy a new tire from you.