So...for about two months now I had a developing and worsening shimmy (front) and vibration u could feel in the seat (rear) while driving on super-smooth roads...had returned to Sears four times to try & balance the wheel/tire assemblies & they could never get it right so today I splurged 80 bucks for a Road Force analysis using a Hunter 9700 and sure enough, two tires are bad...either slipped belt or other problem.

Drove to Sears with the diagnostic report & to make a long story short, since my tires were eight months old, had only 5.4k miles on them and still had 9/32s of tread, I'm getting four new Pilot A/Ss installed Monday

One may pay a bit more for tires at -say- a Sears versus TireRack or other mail-order store but man...when it comes time to get service, the peace of mind one gets from 'local support' is priceless.....

 

But didn't you just say how Sears could not get it right? I hear you about the local service as opposed to the internet but it sounds like Sears didn't do right by you.

 

Did you have to pay to have your MXM4s replaced with Pilot A/S's or did Sears upgrade you for free, Galo?

 

their service, they simply did not have the machine (the Hunter 9700 Road Force Analyzer) they needed to make the diagnosis/reach a conclusion. They kept trying to balance them on normal balance machines to no avail; when I showed them the printout from the 9700 that clearly said 'wheels within spec, tires out of spec, replace tires' they did not hesitate -and that deserves recognition.

 

I am also not happy at all with sears service! With the balance machines they have and the idiots operating them, I am not quite sure if they could balance any tire correctly! They never acutally got my P/S AS balanced properly, so I brought the car to Nissan.

One thing I have to say about sears is that they SEEM to be good when it comes to TRYING to please the customer (note, they may not always succeed). For example they scratched the crap out of my brothers bumper, and when we accused them they did not try to deny it. Instead they said to get an estimate and they would take care of it.

 

Actually he IS ok with Sears service.

And your example shows that they are responsible for what goes on in their garage...Think Nissan would have owned up to that? Nope. Not without a fight.

 

surprised by what they offered...in fact, I even said something like 'hey, I did not come in here expecting you would charge nothing, I know the Pilot A/Ss are a bit more expensive..I'm of course willing to pay something for that' (yeah, I know, some folks would think me stupid for saying that but....life has taught me that fair is always best..) and they said 'no..it's obvious you've spent a lots of time and money in diagnosing this which we could not find so..trust us, it's no charge'

Do they get my business ongoing? You bet they do...

 

I guess I didn't word this properly, or maybe a little too harsh. What I wanted to say was that they seem to go the extra mile, and I referanced that story to show that they have good customer service.

However, for me the bottom line was they were never able to get my job done right. They came up short after 4 attemps to balance my tires properly. I don't know if the equipement was not up to par, or what, but I would much rather pay a little more for my tires and have them balanced properly.

Maybe it is just that Sears