What Tire Supplier Should You ChooseThe last post that we added to our blog was all about the criteria and information you needed to have in order to select a set of tires for your vehicle. It was aimed at the average consumer planning on buying a set of tires for their car. Now we will focus on what Tire Supplier you should consider.

We had recently bought tires for our own car and wanted to share the experience and also what we learned. Every ones criteria will be different, so it is important to give some thought about what you want, what is important to you or high priority and who you need to talk to about tires for your car. The title of our previous post is “How To Select New Tires for Your Car” and you may want to spend a few minutes reading this post as well. Buying tires does not have to be complicated if you have all of the facts.

Our High Priority Criteria for Tire Supplier

For us, we wanted a good quality tire at a reasonable price with a high mileage warranty that would give us stable and safe driving characteristics. We also wanted the following key features :

  • TPMS compatible
  • Nitrogen filled
  • Lifetime Balance and tire rotation included
  • Canada / US Warranty support

Most tire shops carry all of the big name tire brands and most will price match, so after doing a little homework to determine what price I should expect to pay for a set of four tires, it pretty much came down to the above 4 categories that would determine who I would go with.

America’s Tire

Very few Canadian companies operate in the US or have affiliates that you can go to if you have tire problems. The same is true for US companies. We really like Americas Tire, They have given us really good service in the past and we would like to use them. However, they do not have a relationship with any Canadian company and cannot provide warranty service in Canada. They do have shops all over the US and within 100 miles of our home in Canada, but there are companies that are closer to Canada – US coverage.

Wal-Mart

That pretty much left Wal-Mart and Costco as the two places that we could turn to that provided the coverage we were looking for. Wal-Mart had two negatives that caused them to fall by the wayside. Their price certainly was competitive, however, they do not have the facilities to provide nitrogen filled tires or at least the location I visited. Also, their shop did not inspire confidence when I went in to get a price for the tires. The person helping me really did not know that much about tires and I just was not satisfied with the service they provided.

Tire Supplier – Costco

Costco was just so much more professional in quoting a price for tires plus they met all of our requirements. They provided Nitrogen filled tires at no extra cost, they were able to show me the tires they recommended. The tires were on sale at the time , they could install the tires within an hour of purchase, they supported TPMS and they provide a lifetime balancing and tire rotation service.

They are actually international, however being only concerned about Canada and the US , they have lots of stores throughout both countries and they fully support their warranty at all locations. In terms of TPMS, they had skilled technicians that knew enough to not damage the TPMS devices when installing the new tires.

So all in all, it was the right decision to go with COSTCO in this case for tires. The price and the service were excellent and they met all of our criteria for new tires for my car.

For the record we chose Michelin X-Radials DT with an 80,000 mile  warranty, nitrogen filled, lifetime balancing and tire rotation at any of their locations across North America.  Everything included the price came to $539 including taxes!

For more info about the right tires for your car, click here.