QuestionI purchased 4 new Eldorado tires 18 months before a terrible shimmy developed in the front of my Nissan Altima. A mechanic told me that the 2 front tires were warped and were probably defective at the time they were installed since tires can warp with age if they have been sitting in a warehouse too long. I had them replaced successfully solving the shimmy probem. Since the tires were still under warranty, I tried to return the old ones to the dealer I purchased them from. He said tires do not warp sitting in a warehouse and refused to honor the warranty.
Who is right?
AnswerAnna,
Here's the way warranties work.
If you have a problem with a product, you return the product to where you bought it, presenting a receipt showing the date you bought it. At that point, the seller will decide if the problem is covered by the warranty.
If it is covered by the warranty, then the seller will do as the warranty stipulates - and in the case of tires, this is called an "adjustment", and the warranties usually are based in tread depth remaining. Also, the warranty usually stipulates that the adjustment can only be applied to the same tire (or words to that effect).
In this situation, the dealer is usually compensated by the distributor of the tires (and that might be the manufacturer) and the dealer is compensated in 2 ways - by a credit for the adjustment and the new tire he applied.
However, if it is not covered by the warranty, then no adjustment is made.
So there are 2 possibilities:
Possibility #1) The problem was not covered by the warranty: This may be the case. "Warped" is not a commonly used term and it might not register with someone who regularly deals with tires. The term could cover quite a few things including irregular wear. Irregular wear is caused by misalignment and aggravated by insufficient inflation pressure and insufficient rotation practices - none of which the dealer, the distributor, or the manufacturer could control - so this would not be covered by the warranty.
Also, it is unclear to me what the real problem was - and it just might be that my description above isn't correct, but that there is another reason why the warranty doesn't apply.
Possibility #2) The problem WAS covered by the warranty, but the warranty states that the credit only applies to the the purchase of identical tires - and that's why the dealer refused to honor the warranty claim.
But the dealer can sometimes work outside the warranty in order to satisfy a customer. But you've indicated to the dealer that you aren't HIS customer (you bought tires somewhere else.) - and that is probably why he didn't cooperate.
BUT, there is a date code on every tire manufactured. And here's how to tell how long the tires sat in the warehouse:
DOT codes are a 10 to 12 digit number located near the letters "DOT". BTW the digits can be numbers or letters.
The first 2 digits are a code for the manufacturing plant.
The next 2 digits are a code for the tire size.
The next 3 or 4 digits are a code for the type of tire.
The last 3 or 4 digits are the date code. The format is week/week/year/year or week/week/year.
Starting in the year 2000, the date coding used is 4 digits. That means the highest number you should see for the year is 08. Before 1999 the format was 3 digits. 1999 and 2000 are transition years, so you will find both 3 and 4 digits.
So look at the tires for the DOT code and figure out how long it has been since they were manufactured.
If the tires were less than 3 years old when they were applied, then that's OK. If the tires were between 3 and 6 years old, then that's problematic, and may depend on the price you paid (It is common to reduce the price as tires get older) If the tires are older than 6 years old when applied - that's excessive - and while it is true that tires don't "warp" in storage, they do age, and rubber degrades over time.
OK, so that's the whole story. Even if the tires were old when the dealer installed them, the dealer wasn't put in a position of being able to do an adjustment "by the books", and wasn't put in a position to work "outside the warranty". From his perspective this was a strictly "Lose/Lose" proposition. It is no wonder he refused to honor the warranty (even if it was covered).
