ComplaintsforMaine Commercial Tire, Inc.

• Initial Complaint

  01/31/2024

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  I brought my trailer in to get valve stems replaced. When the technician went to fill my tires back up with air he popped it. They tried to tell me I ran them flat and thats what caused it. I explained they werent ran flat. They are on a tag axle and was up. I called the place I bought the tires from and they told me to look for signs of run flat. The manager said he wasnt going to fix it. Stated they were ran flat. His tech/receptionist said there wasnt signs of it. So the manager told me it was defective tire and they werent paying for it. They made me drive away on a rim.

  Business response

  03/05/2024

  The customer came to ** with two flat tires;  a tire can still have some air in it, but if it doesnt have the proper air inflation its underinflated and in our industry that is considered a flat tire. If a tire has been run underinflated it will compromise the integrity of the tire and when aired back up the sidewall of the tire can blow out, its a condition known as a zipper. Although, the customers tag axle was up when he came to us for service, his tag axle was down when he hauled cars from Virginia to Maine. A tag axle is used to carry the extra load and can lift up when there is no load. He told us that he had to air these tires up in ************, so we know that the tires had in fact been underinflated thus creating a run flat condition. We checked his tires out and discovered that the valve stems were leaking causing his tires to loose air, again indicating that he had been running these tires underinflated. After replacing the valve stems we proceeded to air the tires back up and one of them blew out the sidewall with the zipper condition explained at the beginning. At this point the customer expected us to give him a tire for free. The tires the customer asked us to fix were defective because he ran them too long underinflated thats not our fault. The customer was very argumentative and called our manager a s*** head, and would not accept the fact that he created the problem not us.  Maybe he thought a tire has to be completely out of air to be considered flat. We are the tire experts and the only way a tire fails the way his tire failed is if it had been run underinflated for a period of time. We did not have the right ply tire to replace at that location so he went to another one of our locations and bought the tire he needed. We didnt charge him for the flat that we were able fix at our Waterville location and we didnt charge him for mounting and dismounting when he got the replacement tire. We felt the customer to be unreasonable, his recourse should have been directed at the company that originally sold him those tires and didnt replace the valve stems, not take it out on us. And finally he did not drive away on a rim, the tires were on his tag axle and as he said the tag axle was up. We felt we handled the situation correctly.
  
   
  
  *****************
  
  Vice President

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