Tire store tried to screw me

[TJDukit]

So my wife drives an '04 Hyundai Elantra. I never drive it and we took it on trip back to Tahoe and up to Oregon Thanksgiving weekend. I get behind the wheel and hit the interstate and the damn thing starts shaking at 62mph. The steering wheel vibration stoped at 80mph so just tires out of balance not that big of a deal. The thing was that my wife told me that it had been doing it for a while now.

Awesome right, well we get back from Oregon and I take a look at the car and the tires are all but toast and the rear brakes are pretty bad. I get the car down to the tire shop on base and they tell me after everything is ready for the alignment I have a bad tie-rod end. I ask him how much it will cost and he says $140. Are you frickin kidding me?

I went to autozone bought the tie-rod end for 11$(the tire shop wanted $60 just for parts) went home and had it changed in twenty minutes.

I just can't believe they can possible charge that much. Even if they do the standard charging in one hour increments for labor it still should have come out to less than $100 to fix one tie-rod end.

Not that I ever let places like that to any work I can do myself, which is pretty much everything short of mounting and balancing tires. It just blows my mind. I guess we can thank all the stupid people who are willing to pay that much for such easy work.

 

[jackjoh]

An old story says, know your enemy. You also need to know your friends so you know who to take things to for repair. I like Interstate Auto Parts.

 

[Chevycrew]

Did that $140 include the cost of the alignment after replacing the TRE?

 

[TJDukit]

I had already decided to pay for the lifetime alignment which was $140 and the one time alignment was $70. So I guess it has already kind of paid for itself. They went ahead and did the alignment, I went home changed out the tie-rod and brought it back to get it done again.

I had them put on some Bridgestone SE200 tires which are really good in the snow. While I was waiting for them to finish putting tires on we got an inch of snow on base and got to test them out right away. It makes me feel a little better about my wife driving around on good tires.

 

[lewis]

I took my tacoma down to the BigO to get an alignment and they told me my tierods were so bad they couldn't do my alignment. My truck only had 30k miles on so I took it home and fond that the steering rack bolt had come loose which was causing the play. I tightened it and took it back. They couldn't believe how fast I had changed the tie rods (so they thought) since everything still looked brand new.

 

[Darwin]

i feel your pain. i went to the olive garden for dinner and they wanted 87.00 dollars for two people to have pasta and a drink with desert. i could have made it at home myself for 6.00 bucks

 

[cannoncrawler]

i feel your pain. i went to the olive garden for dinner and they wanted 87.00 dollars for two people to have pasta and a drink with desert. i could have made it at home myself for 6.00 bucks

I know, right!?

 

[benjy]

After reading your post 2x, I'm still trying to figure out how the tire store tried to screw you... Was it the fact that you could do it at your house on your own time for cheaper than they were going to charge you? Does that surprise you...? Really?

Here's a test, call around to 100 different tire stores and ask them how much they'll charge you for that work. Then... report back, we'll run a regression analysis, and if $140 is considered an outlier, then I think we can determine they tried to screw you

All kidding aside, you have identified the direct material cost of doing that job on your vehicle. Are you aware of the other costs associated with running that business? I'm not trying to defend their ridiculously overpriced products/services, just saying maybe they didn't try to screw you quite as bad as you think.

 

[Caleb]

After reading your post 2x, I'm still trying to figure out how the tire store tried to screw you... Was it the fact that you could do it at your house on your own time for cheaper than they were going to charge you? Does that surprise you...? Really?

Here's a test, call around to 100 different tire stores and ask them how much they'll charge you for that work. Then... report back, we'll run a regression analysis, and if $140 is considered an outlier, then I think we can determine they tried to screw you

All kidding aside, you have identified the direct material cost of doing that job on your vehicle. Are you aware of the other costs associated with running that business? I'm not trying to defend their ridiculously overpriced products/services, just saying maybe they didn't try to screw you quite as bad as you think.

Ya know, I had been thinking the same thing ever since he first posted this. The tire store offered you a price to do said work. It's not like they did it without telling and and then tried to bend you over. For someone that has no ability to do the work themselves, that's probably a fair rate.

 

[Shawn]

If you are comparing a tie rod end from Autozone vs. a quality end made by moog, um... you will be replacing that Autozone one next year. $11.00 for a tie rod end is so under priced I would even think of running it.

Get what you pay for.

I'm not saying you shouldn't have done it yourself, I'm saying if you are why not use quality parts.

 

[Gravy]

yea right so when did korean cars come with quality expensive parts lol^

 

[Kiel]

yea right so when did korean cars come with quality expensive parts lol^

They became expensive when they had to ship them here across the ocean duh!

 

[Gravy]

oh ya..! haha right

 

[Shawn]

yea right so when did korean cars come with quality expensive parts lol^

so replacing crap with crap makes it ok?

 

[TJDukit]

Alright well maybe they didn't actually screw me but really(maybe I should have titled this thread MADE MYSELF $104 THE OTHER DAY), they want to charge $60 for a $11 part and then charge $80 for a 20 minute install. To me that's highway robbery. And it's a family car that doesn't need high dollar parts, it's not like I'm taking this thing off-road, I mean really do I need to run a Moog tie-rod end, no I don't think so. The rediculous thing to me is that people are willing to pay such outrageous prices and the stores can get away with it.

The cost of running their store has nothing to do with the cost of replacing a tie rod end. I realize they need to make money and that's fine, but if I count my time and the cost of the part and charged myself the same price it would have actually cost them to replace it, it would have cost $37. That's $11 for the part and $26 for my 20 minutes of actual work. The fact alone that they can charge for one hour of labor on a twenty minute job is crap, I do realize that is standard practice.

The whole point of this thread was for me to vent about the BS that we have to put up with because people are willing to pay this much because they are either too lazy or too incompetent to do this kind of work themselves. Yes it's the state of the world we live in and it's sad.

And as for the quality of the Autozone part. It did come with a lifetime warranty on it so if and when it fails again, I take it back get a new one, go back to the tire store and get the alignment done again for free and guess what I'm out another 20 minutes of wrenching and a couple hours out of my day no big deal. If I had paid them to do it and it had failed again I'm out $140 and have to pay to get it done again.

 

[4554x4]

Perspective check

Quote: "The cost of running their store has nothing to do with the cost of replacing a tie rod end." ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?! When you go to a fast food place do you pay for a soda? I hope not because if you bought the soda directly from Coca Cola you would only be paying about 3 cents for the actual cost of the soda, but then you would have to buy a cup which would probably be about 5 cents. Wow they charge what? about $1.50 or more? Hummm. Because of all the stupid and lazy people out there who are not going straight to coke and buying the product themselves, we are getting ripped off and have to pay outragous prices for sodas at restaurants. Maybe it's because of all the overhead costs of running a business, i e. state tax, federal tax, unemployment insurance, workmans comp, light, gas, water, uniforms, lease, telephone, hazardous waste charges....blahblahblah need I go on? I don't think so.

So open your own shop and charge $37.00 and see if you can feed your family and pay your house mortgage not to mention your employees and then write and tell us if you are really getting ripped off.

Thats awesome that you can fix it yourself. More power to ya. Just wait untill you need to do something techincal. Then you will find out the cost associated with a scanner, lab scope, torque wrenches etc.

 

[Tacoma]

Yep.. amortizing out the total cost of business is a real *****. I do not complain when I buy store-bought products and/or services.

 

[JL Rockies]

I am sure the Fed will fix this too.

 

[UNSTUCK]

The whole point of this thread was for me to vent about the BS that we have to put up with because people are willing to pay this much because they are either too lazy or too incompetent to do this kind of work themselves. Yes it's the state of the world we live in and it's sad.

Do you buy popcorn at the moivies? If we all stopped buying it, how long do you think it would take for the price to drop?

I'm dredding getting on the airplane tomorrow, knowing that I have to pay to check a bag.

This stuff only happens because we allow it to happen.


Oh, and I loved your line about your car being only a family car. Yeah, your families safty is now resting in an $11 part. A car only needs to be able to do two things. Steer and Stop.

 

[TJDukit]

I'm not saying that paying $37 would be a fair price. What I'm saying is that making $100 profit off of something like that is rediculous. There is fair and then there is just plain crazy.

Yeah my families safety is resting in an $11 part because it's an OEM replacement part and I don't need beefed up parts for something that isn't seeing excessive stress. I'm sorry but that tie-rod end is not going to just mysteriously break. Just like if I had to replace a bunch of bolts on the same car, do I need to go spend the money to upgrade to grade 8 bolts...no, the car is not putting enough stress on these parts to require me to overspend on unneccesary and expensive parts. Yes the shop needs to make money I'm not arguing that what I was pointing out is that the amount of money they make off of people is rediculous.

I do not own my own shop nor will I ever open my own shop so I guess maybe you are right I will never totally understand but to me it's rediculous. I don't eat fast food because I don't eat that garbage and I don't go to the movies because I'm not willing to pay $16 dollars just to get in the door for a movie for two, I can wait for six months and rent it from a red box for $1 and enjoy it at home.

I don't want the government to fix this. Not that they could anyway. This was just a little rant about the state of the world we live in and it's not going to change. As long as people are willing to pay outrageous prices for overpriced goods because they either don't know any better, can't fix it themselves or just make enough money they don't care.