Hey Buds,

I was at the shop the other day getting an alignment, when some dude rolled up with 4 brand new tires. He was having the Tire store put them on, and balance them. He said he got the best deal online for tires (he was driving some kinda BMW).

So where is the best place to Purchase tires ?


thanks for your input...

~A

ebay is a good place to look. I bought 2 ENVigors off ebay for 343. It is more than I could have gotten them from a local buddy but my buddy didn't have them in stock. But after paying TD $60 to mount and balance the tires, I could have just bought the tires from TD for around $425 and gotten free alignment as well.
Some times you can find deals on tire rack and discount tire.

I do the same thing all the time. Tire rack is good and they have a great review system that lets you compare tires based on consumer reviews. They rate each tire on a lot of different characteristics so you can pick the one that best meets your needs.

Some shops will price match or get close plus throw in the mount/balance.

I've used discount tire direct in the past and I'm up in Canada. It was still cheaper than anywhere locally that I could source them.

do your research, narrow down the exact tire you want, and shop the crap out of it.

Sometimes I use TR as a good review piece, and then get the tires from DT since it's 5 minutes from my home.

I bought acouple sets off of amazon because they were like 10 or so cheaper then ebay and sometimes ebay is cheaper, or even tire rack sometimes is cheaper.

The thing with buying tires online is that you still have to mount and balance them locally. Many tire shops will charge extra for mounting/balancing tires bought from outside (internet) and the price differential compared winds up not working out too well. At least thats the way things are in the Northeast US.

Buying tires mounted and balanced on new rims, however, the online tire retailers are a grand slam home run

never ever had this issue, a mount and balance is a mount and balance, if they charge the customer more because they found a tire cheaper than what that service center could provide, you shouldn't be going there.

TR is great a research tool, and usually not the cheapest , at least from what I have seen, i agree, i think i got my last pair from DT

Usually discount Tire or Tirerack have the best prices. You need to shop and compare.

I agree, sounds like they may be butt hurt because you didn't choose from them.

They also may have a deal with tirerack and give discounts on installation if you do
get them through them. It's really not a huge deal for ME, but seems like a good idea to ask because I know for a fact some places do have discounts on installation.

Discounted mounting & balancing is a good enough deal if the store has the exact tires that you're looking for. IOW, if I want GY Eagle F1 Asymmetric All-Season tires, I don't want to hear "we don't have those in stock but we do have GY Eagle Sport All Seasons in your size and they're just as good".




Norm