Tyre fitting companies not wanting to fit your tyres?

[craig1912]

JQ said:

Can those people stating they get their tyres changed for £5 a corner please publish the name and location of these places.

Whilst most will likely not be close to me I'm sure someone on here will benefit, plus the tyre places get extra custom, so a win-win. I've never been able to get a quote of less than £15 a corner so I'd really like to know where the cheap place are.

Cheers

Yep cheapest for me is £15 each on South Coast (Fareham)

[kambites]

craig1912 said:

Yep cheapest for me is £15 each on South Coast (Fareham)

The place attached Asda in Eastleigh charged £10 per corner last time I had them do the Skoda (about two years ago, I suppose). The Elise they did for free just because they liked it.

[ambuletz]

maybe it's because they don't want to be apart of the yoof culture of stretched tyres? Last thing you'd want is be linked to a prat with unsafe tyres on watchdog.

[Sheepshanks]

Costco used to do it for £3, but they put the fitting charge up - although it was still only £7 last time I used them. However they told me they'd stopped fitting customer's own tyres as they were having too many cases of them getting damaged and then they're unable to organise replacements due to their single brand policy.

I got my wheels refurbed by a branch of The Wheel Specialist and they implored me to take them back there for tyre change - they charge £10 (probably plus VAT) but hopefully they should be more careful than the average place. Although they did put a tyre on back to front and then insisted it was like that when it came in, which it wasn't.

[ukaskew]

Bathwick Tyres (quite a few in the South West) didn't charge me anything when I supplied my own tyres, but both me and my wife always use them so I guess a bit of loyalty bonus may have been at play.

[philmots]

I use my local wheel refurb company, it's less than a mile down the road.

They don't offer it as a service but as a customer they're happy to do it for a very reasonable price, and they're not going to scratch their own work!!

[mr_fibuli]

I've never had a problem with ATS. A bit pricey at £15 a tyre, but they are the only place I've tried locally that always gets the balancing spot on.

[feef]

craig1912 said:

JQ said:

Can those people stating they get their tyres changed for £5 a corner please publish the name and location of these places.

Whilst most will likely not be close to me I'm sure someone on here will benefit, plus the tyre places get extra custom, so a win-win. I've never been able to get a quote of less than £15 a corner so I'd really like to know where the cheap place are.

Cheers

Yep cheapest for me is £15 each on South Coast (Fareham)

Fast-Fit on the Cambridge St in St Neots, Cambs

Never had an issue taking tyres in there to be fitted, either on the vehicle or as a pile of wheels, £5 a corner sounds about right

[TITWONK]

Remember to tell um you are paying cash and you do not want a receipt! seems to bring the bill down a bit

[cautiontothewind]

I can see why tyre companies would not want to fit 3rd party supplied tyres. Or at least i can see some semi-valid reasons that they feel comfortable hiding behind.

If in fitting a tyre it was damaged in any way, it would potentially be a legal issue. Who is to blame, original supplier or fitter? Both would more than likely blame each other!

If there was for some reason a more serious issue, like a blowout on the motorway, again, who is to blame, original supplier or fitter?

Tyre companies are set up to SELL and fit tyres they supply. I would no more expect to have a tyre company fit a 3rd party tyre than i would expect to sit in a restaurant with a bottle of wine i purchased at a supermarket/take a steak to the same restaurant and ask the chef to cook it for me.

Profit is made from the tyres being sold to customers and if this is the business model, why would they change it.

In writing this i'm falling into the "why should they be expected to fit a 3rd party tyre" camp.

Like everything in life, the man on the shop floor has been instructed by the powers that be! Legal, finance, or both have gotten involved and dictated the way it has to be.

[Slow]

feef said:

craig1912 said:

JQ said:

Can those people stating they get their tyres changed for £5 a corner please publish the name and location of these places.

Whilst most will likely not be close to me I'm sure someone on here will benefit, plus the tyre places get extra custom, so a win-win. I've never been able to get a quote of less than £15 a corner so I'd really like to know where the cheap place are.

Cheers

Yep cheapest for me is £15 each on South Coast (Fareham)

Fast-Fit on the Cambridge St in St Neots, Cambs

Never had an issue taking tyres in there to be fitted, either on the vehicle or as a pile of wheels, £5 a corner sounds about right

Godsman tyres near tain, friendly with the guy so just £5 each

[Mr2Mike]

Sump said:

I got sick of visiting tyre centres. Purchased my own machine and balancer for a grand.

If I had the space I'd do this in a heartbeat. I have a friend with a fitting machine since he goes through tyres at a prodigious rate on his rally car, but sadly no balancing machine.

[Deerfoot]

SuperHangOn said:

I call around the local tyre places but can never manage to get the low fitting prices I read on here. It makes buying from Camskill a false economy compared to black circles. Maybe I sound too posh.

I'm in the same situation. The fitting charge quoted locally wipes out any savings so I might as well use Blackcircles...

[benharris]

feef said:

Fast-Fit on the Cambridge St in St Neots, Cambs

Never had an issue taking tyres in there to be fitted, either on the vehicle or as a pile of wheels, £5 a corner sounds about right

That's good to hear. I need to get 4 winter tyres fitted to my spare set of wheels next week and was planning to take them to Fast Fit in Cambridge (Histon Road). Hopefully they'll be similarly priced!

[Mr GrimNasty]

loose cannon said:

Goodyear eagle f1 assy 2 235/40/18 national tyres price £143.90 each fitted
Tyreleader yesterday charging £98.90 deliverd for the same tyre !

Kwik Fit have been wise to the on-line tyre business for ages, so if you book online, in 95% of cases you won't be able to get them supplied and fitted with any worthwhile saving.

e.g. Kwik Fit online tyres quote your Goodyears @ £113 each total fitted including disposal (free mobile fitting if 2 or more).

They also frequently do further discounts.

[eltawater]

My local Just Tyres will fit tyres for 15 pounds a corner, might be worth seeing if you have a branch near you?

I eventually went with Event Tyres mobile fitting as I couldn't get all four wheels + all four new tyres in the car to get down to Just Tyres. Event charged me 20 pound per corner, although they're 15 pounds a corner for 16" tyres and below.

[smithyithy]

JQ said:

Can those people stating they get their tyres changed for £5 a corner please publish the name and location of these places.

Whilst most will likely not be close to me I'm sure someone on here will benefit, plus the tyre places get extra custom, so a win-win. I've never been able to get a quote of less than £15 a corner so I'd really like to know where the cheap place are.

Cheers

Might sound daft, but it helps to just 'know' people - in my local area there's a fair few little backstreet garages, I know a few of them from working in a motor factors years ago and helping them out.

I've got an uncle-in-law (I think, not actually sure) that owns a garage (more of a hut to be honest) that will fit mine for a fiver each.

And years ago I got some stretched tyres fitted (I know, shoot me) at the only place I could find that had a bead-cheater for £5 each as the lad that worked there was also in the VW 'scene'.

[hotchy]

Local guy does them for £20 for all 4. Thing is his prices are that good i dont bother ordering online anyway. Obviously swapping winters is different

[CraigyMc]

craig1912 said:

JQ said:

Can those people stating they get their tyres changed for £5 a corner please publish the name and location of these places.

Whilst most will likely not be close to me I'm sure someone on here will benefit, plus the tyre places get extra custom, so a win-win. I've never been able to get a quote of less than £15 a corner so I'd really like to know where the cheap place are.

Cheers

Yep cheapest for me is £15 each on South Coast (Fareham)

The cheapest place I ever found did all four for £5 and a bacon butty (Eastleigh). That was also an elise, and I recon they did it because they thought the car was interesting.

(That was fitting Yoko LTS and binning an old set of Toyo Proxes T1Rs, so would have been about 10 years ago, when £5 bought more than a cup of coffee.)

Side note: it is possible to carry a set of 4 tyres in an elise, just not easy.

C

[NelsonMuntz]

This thread has brought back so many good memories. I hope you don't mind me sharing.

My first job was tyre and exhaust fitter at a big chain, the company policy was no change-overs, This was about 1984 I think. The Manager however was a diamond, and said we could do them on Saturday's because it was normally dead, and he was happy for us to pocket the money

At the top of the road was a massive wheel showroom, and all week people would pop in and ask if we could do change-overs. So me and my mate started saying "Not during the week, but we can do them Saturday morning". The owner of the wheel shop in the end used to tell people to come down on Saturday having found out.

Before long the front of the garage was full of cars, and soon the street. There was me and one other fitter, and we used to work our nuts off. We had a system going that a Formula One team would've be proud of.

We would make over a weeks wage's in one morning. Mind you. it used to feel like we had done a weeks work in one morning too. I literally used to have wage packets at home unopened. (Yep we used to be paid weekly in cash back then kids)

The Manager used to sit in the office with his copy of Razzle and pop his head out now and again and just
laugh at the amount of cars lining up, and us two fitters running around like a couple of nutter's. Me and the other fitter used to give the Manager a score each at the end of the morning, so he was happy.

But all good things must come to an end. And it did. I think the amount of wheel weight's going "missing" might have had something to do with it

But great memories and paid for my Escort to look real sweet at the time.