One thing that's bugged me a little is the penchant for tire places to have great buy three, get one free tire deals, but recently Tire Kingdom blew them all out of the water with its BOGO replacement: Buy two, get two free deal.

I don't get it. Either we're getting robbed when we buy a single tire -- which, I'm afraid to admit, I've been trained to do over long decades of watching a particular role model do the same -- or there's something fishy about these B3G1 and now B2G2 offers.

There isn't a ton of red tape on the Tire Kingdom deal. Here it is:

For a limited time, buy two select tires, and get two free when you purchase our Value Installation Package on all four tires
...
Valid on purchase of select in-stock tires. Purchase of Value Installation Package at regular price required on all four tires. Charge for additional parts/service if needed. Plus up to 10% shop fee based on non-discounted retail price not to exceed $35 (where permitted). Local, state and/or tire disposal fees where applicable. In instances of a staggered fitment vehicle, the purchase combination must include four (4) qualifying products. Discount will be taken off the lowest-priced tires. Not valid with other discount offers. Eligibility may vary depending on tire size and model

Okay, so we've got a shop fee for 10% of the tire, which is a little high. It's fair to say that we're only getting a 90-95% break in the freebees.

But the only super serious issue here is "when you purchase our Value Installation Package on all four tires". At its worst, we might find ourselves experiencing something like this post suggests they found:

Buy 2 tires, get 2 free..
2 tires, installed, costs $465, and that's if you only buy the 2 and don't get the other 2.
Now, if you get the 2 free and get those installed, it's $950.

But let's pretend installation fees aren't the scam for a second. What's going on? I think I figured it out.

Tire places : Zombies :: Used Tires : Brains

I recently had a nail in the wall/edge of the tread of a tire, and dropped it off loose to my usual tire place to get a replacement. Got a call later that they only had one new tire in stock at that size and one used tire.

I wanted a nicer tire with a longer warranty than the one they had new in stock, but didn't want to wait carless for the two or three days it'd take a different new tire to come in. I also had, pre-nail, four fairly old tires, with one bald enough that it really did need replacing soon. Naturally, this one with the nail was one of the tires with a decent amount of tread left, not the balding one. But it couldn't be repaired because of the nail's placement, so off it went.

(Did I rotate the tires? No, I'm afraid I didn't, which is why one was much worse than the others)

 So without a quality new tire available, and against my better judgement, I went with the used tire, pretending that I'd only use it until I got all four tires in to one of those crazy buy 3 get 1 deals. That is, I was, in my mind, replacing trash with trash until I could get all the trash out.

Used price: $55 + installation
New price: $110 + installation

When I went to replace the bald tire weeks later, I was suspicious that the three other tires (including the "new used" one) still had a fair amount of tread. And then I did what I always do: I bought one new tire to replace the one that was showing its belt, and left the other three.

A while later, when I went to repair a busted radiator, my local shop gave me this as part of their generic vehicle checklist:


image showing tire wear on my tires


So tell me which was...
  1. The new tire
  2. The used tire I'd recently purchased
  3. The first and second four year-old tires that are left.
Answers?
  1. New Tire: Right front, exactly where you guessed.
  2. "New" Used: Right rear! As bad as my worst remaining old tire!
  3. Four-year old tires: Both lefts!
    • One painfully better than my "new" used.
    • Of course the one I'd replaced was a rear tire that looked just as good as the "7" here (－‸ლ)...
Look, apparently margins on new tires at retail aren't great, but the margins on used tires are wonderful. Why? Because when they replace all four tires, the shop gets a ton of good, free used tires from you. In fact, because they don't have to dispose of the tires they can sell, selling the used tires actually saves your tire store money before they collect the first dollar for them (I smell class action lawsuit on the disposal fees).

So if I'd gone ahead before I'd gotten the nail in my tire and gotten four tires at once because I had one bald tire, I would've given that tire company at least two great used tires, and probably a third they could've used too. 

 Does that make sense? These numbers tell me that before I got the used tire that's now a 5 on the right rear, I probably had something like two 7s, a 5, and a 3. We now know that a "new used" tire can be a 5*, so I originally, before the nail, had one bad tire and three tires that weren't so used that they couldn't be resold.

* Note that these are all numbers after about a month of a half of driving after adding the "new used" tire, so I'm taking a small liberty. So used is 5+, I had 7+ and 5+, etc etc...)

 That's $110-$165 (using the $55 retail price) I would've handed over to the tire company for nothing if I'd gotten all four replaced when I saw one had gone bald.

That is, I've already given them back more in used tires than the free tire they'd "give" me. Plus that fourth tire cost them less than the $110 retail price. Plus I still have to pay them installation on that "free" tire even though I should be charging them for access to my resalable used tires. ;^)


TL;DR

Your car is a veritable gold mine of resalable used tires to tire companies. That's one reason why they want to entice you to install all at once, because it also very likely means you're replacing a few resalable tires early. They're talking you into giving them your good tires for free.

If you rotate tires and drive them all equally down to the nubs, congratulations. You win with the BOGO or buy 3, get 1 deals.

But I'm betting that's the minority position. ;^) And if you don't, by replacing all four at once, you're paying to give away good tires with lots of miles left on them.

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