- Apr 19, 2001
- 25,297
- 2,000
- 126
My mom's car has a tire leaking badly, asked me to look at it. Even though they have plenty of tread and seem to be only 2 years old they're cracking in the sidewall like older tires do. I took them to both Town Fair and Costco and got the same answer, they're not 2 years old, they're 5 years old and failing like tires that age do. No way to repair which is true of tires that are cracking because of rubber age. Shop around, check Town Fair, Costco, BJs and a few local places, find a set of Bridgestones from BJs cheaper than other places and place the order. The warehouse stores stock very few tires, mostly you order, they ship and then install. Got to the Tire Center and checked the tires to make sure they were the ones I ordered and read the information. The tires were manufactured in January 2015 and are approaching four years old. Holy crap, they have maybe a year of life left before they too start cracking in the sidewall. Of course I refused to have them installed and contacted BJs. Here's where the fun starts.
BJs absolved themselves of all responsibility. They claim it's not their fault because they don't carry 99% of the tires they sell in their own supply chain. You order from them, then they order from a distributor called Simple Tire LLC which ships the tires directly to your local club where they are installed by a BJs technician. Since they don't do anything except order and install it's not their fault if they're old. Address all complaints to Simple Tire LLC. So I did that, asking how it was possible that a set of tires that old can be shipped out by mistake and questioning their quality control. Their answer was truly astounding. They knew the tires were 3 years and 10 months old and shipped them to BJs anyway. That is company policy, it's how they operate. Anything less than four years old is "new" and even if it's already cracking in the sidewall it's "new". They buy up old inventory too old to be sold by ethical distributors and sell it themselves as a "new" tire since technically it's never been on the road. This is legal believe it or not. They claim, in a truly awe-inspiring display of buck-passing that BJs is the last line of defense and if they install a 4 year old tire then BJs is saying it's an okay product and they're accepting responsibility for the tires age. Went back to BJs, they admit they know how Simple Tire LLC operates and that Simple Tire LLC sends them four year old tires, but sticks to their original story that it's Simple Tire LLC who is responsible for the tires failing prematurely and potentially being unsafe since all they do is install.
This bothered me, so I've tried contacting some manufacturers whose product Simple Tire LLC sells as they claim to deal with 300+ brands. Got an interesting response from Bridgestone today. They know what Simple Tire LLC is doing and that they're supplying four year old Bridgestone tires to BJs to be installed as new on the cars of BJs customers and they flat out don't care. Since Simple Tire LLC is not an authorized distributor of Bridgestone Tires then Bridgestone will take no responsibility for their action and will do nothing to prevent Simple Tire LLC from tainting the supply of legitimately new Bridgestone tires being sold. When you walk into a store like Tire Rack or Town Fair or Firestones you have absolutely no guarantee that the tires being sold by that outlet are in fact new. They could be sourcing cheaper, old tires from Simple Tire LLC. Clearly, anyone that buys tires from BJs is a major idiot, but now I'm not sure where to buy them because every outlet could be buying from Simple Tire LLC. Unless you see the labels, which are easily switched, you have no way of knowing if that tire you got from Tire Rack is a new one that will have a five year lifespan or a four year old one that will fail in 12-18 months.
I went to the place that my mother got her "new" tires from 18 months ago to question if they knew why they were failing after so little time if they were in fact new. They showed me the paperwork on the tires. They were in fact legally "new" tires, but were at the time almost four years old. The source of those tires? Yep, Simple Tire LLC.
Don't go near BJs and demand to see the labels and paperwork on any tire you buy from any source. Don't trust BJS, don't trust Costco, don't trust Town Fair, don't trust Sears. This is one of the sleaziest businesses I have ever seen.
BJs absolved themselves of all responsibility. They claim it's not their fault because they don't carry 99% of the tires they sell in their own supply chain. You order from them, then they order from a distributor called Simple Tire LLC which ships the tires directly to your local club where they are installed by a BJs technician. Since they don't do anything except order and install it's not their fault if they're old. Address all complaints to Simple Tire LLC. So I did that, asking how it was possible that a set of tires that old can be shipped out by mistake and questioning their quality control. Their answer was truly astounding. They knew the tires were 3 years and 10 months old and shipped them to BJs anyway. That is company policy, it's how they operate. Anything less than four years old is "new" and even if it's already cracking in the sidewall it's "new". They buy up old inventory too old to be sold by ethical distributors and sell it themselves as a "new" tire since technically it's never been on the road. This is legal believe it or not. They claim, in a truly awe-inspiring display of buck-passing that BJs is the last line of defense and if they install a 4 year old tire then BJs is saying it's an okay product and they're accepting responsibility for the tires age. Went back to BJs, they admit they know how Simple Tire LLC operates and that Simple Tire LLC sends them four year old tires, but sticks to their original story that it's Simple Tire LLC who is responsible for the tires failing prematurely and potentially being unsafe since all they do is install.
This bothered me, so I've tried contacting some manufacturers whose product Simple Tire LLC sells as they claim to deal with 300+ brands. Got an interesting response from Bridgestone today. They know what Simple Tire LLC is doing and that they're supplying four year old Bridgestone tires to BJs to be installed as new on the cars of BJs customers and they flat out don't care. Since Simple Tire LLC is not an authorized distributor of Bridgestone Tires then Bridgestone will take no responsibility for their action and will do nothing to prevent Simple Tire LLC from tainting the supply of legitimately new Bridgestone tires being sold. When you walk into a store like Tire Rack or Town Fair or Firestones you have absolutely no guarantee that the tires being sold by that outlet are in fact new. They could be sourcing cheaper, old tires from Simple Tire LLC. Clearly, anyone that buys tires from BJs is a major idiot, but now I'm not sure where to buy them because every outlet could be buying from Simple Tire LLC. Unless you see the labels, which are easily switched, you have no way of knowing if that tire you got from Tire Rack is a new one that will have a five year lifespan or a four year old one that will fail in 12-18 months.
I went to the place that my mother got her "new" tires from 18 months ago to question if they knew why they were failing after so little time if they were in fact new. They showed me the paperwork on the tires. They were in fact legally "new" tires, but were at the time almost four years old. The source of those tires? Yep, Simple Tire LLC.
Don't go near BJs and demand to see the labels and paperwork on any tire you buy from any source. Don't trust BJS, don't trust Costco, don't trust Town Fair, don't trust Sears. This is one of the sleaziest businesses I have ever seen.
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