2009 Ford Flex Limited: Tires

If they aren't doing something as simple as rotating the tires, what else aren't they doing that is harder to detect?

Sounds like the Ford dealership is unscrupulous and/or incompetent.

I'd say a return to the stealership is in order to get some of our money back!

Agreed go back to the dealer and raise hell. :)

Did you buy the tyres from Stokes, or just have them fitted by them? Are they a TireRack dealership?

I've dropped shipped orders from The Tire Rack at Stokes a couple of times, Huss.

And why the U.K. English?

And Jesse Scroggins committed to USC yesterday! :o)

http://myespn.go.com/blogs/pac10/0-10-75/Scroggins-picks-USC-over-Florida-and-Tennessee.html

Fight On!

Stokes must love you guys....

They don't unless Edmunds quoting us the normal customer price and paying something else. Because $376.28 is retail without any sort of discount.

I may be missing something here (I've only owned one car with non-staggered wheel/tires, so only one car with rotatable wheels) but I don't really see how rotating reduces maintenance costs, or how the dealer failing to rotate in this case increases costs. Supposing (for ease of math) the front tires wear twice as quickly as the rear tires, you replace fronts twice as often as normal, but rears half as often as normal. Doesn't that equal a zero sum?

Now of course, I can understand that rotating leads to more even tire wear, but to me that seems the extent of its value, not overall longer average tire life.

If I went to a dealer and paid for tire rotation and they didn't rotate the tires, I would stop going to the dealer unless they paid for my new tires.

why those tires and why buy them there?

stovt001
Good point, but not THE point. Magrath says the dealer TOLD them they were rotating tires; but in reality the weren't.

Well, unless they were simply flipping the rears; which is pretty pointless and a somewhat frivilous way to inflate labor charges.

Thanks for posting about this, I would love to read more about this topic.

http://www.carforall.net

"Now of course, I can understand that rotating leads to more even tire wear, but to me that seems the extent of its value, not overall longer average tire life."

Some tires also get noisier as they age and proper rotation often prevents that from taking place.
Here is Tire Rack's take on rotation:
http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/techpage.jsp?techid=43&
I think that maintaining proper tire pressure is more important, but I also rotate the tires on all of my cars and SUVs.

Buy a grease pencil and mark the tires. If they charge you for a rotation, they can't lie to you if the marked tires are the same spot.

"Buy a grease pencil and mark the tires. If they charge you for a rotation, they can't lie to you if the marked tires are the same spot."

A friend of mine intentionally set his truck's tire pressures 5-10 pounds high or low(and intentionally deflated the spare) before taking it to the dealer for a scheduled service. After being charged for "Checking and adjusting tire pressures- including spare", he brought the service manager out and showed him that none of the tires had been checked. At least one tech lost his job as a result.