The following is a combination of several posts from another forum:

So I noticed I had a slow leak in my rear tire and I took it in to get it patched. I decided to take it to an honest to god tire place (Merchants), instead of just some old garage because I figured they'd treat the 19 inch rims better. Plus, I live in a McLean, VA... it's a pretty ritzy area with lots of people with cars way nicer that an Infiniti. Figured these guys had seen nice rims before. Big mistake.

I drop my car off at lunch, show back up at 6pm, and the guy says that the tech is just getting to it. I walk around the back and I see the guy supplementing the machine the removes the tire with his own little crowbar action! Needless to say, it completely scratched up my rims (The tool is needed in some case to get the tire off the rim, but should not scratch the rim, and they have plastic gaurds in some cases).

After doing a completely retarded job of trying to patch/plug the hole, I'm informed that it can't be fixed.

Manager comes out and immediately says they are getting me new a new rim. Which I thought was great, because I was prepared for a fight on the whole issue. Of course, they try to sell me a new tire too. I tell them there's no way I'm buying a tire from this place. My tire only has 1600 miles on it.

The manager said he'd call Infiniti and get the new rim. But not the tire. I'll get the tire myself and have someone else put it on. Never going to that place again.

Anyway, the lesson I take from this is 19'' low-profile tires are extremely hard to take off the wheel. If you need to do it, goto infiniti.

On saturday (4 days after this all began), Merchants finally ordered the wheel from Rosthental (which is two blocks from them). I pick up the wheel and ask them to get the Tire Pressure Sensor off the old wheel. I miss family weekend with parents because I can't leave because I have no wheel/tire. I've been telling them this the whole time. All they needed to do was order the wheel. Did that matter to them? No. Got corporate merchant involved, and even they took 4 days to get these guys at Tyson's to move. There was a lot of mis-information (and outright lies) coming from tyson guys to their corporate office, so I don't blame corporate too much (at one point they told their regional manager that the wheel was there and the issue was resolved - this was before they had even ordered the wheel!).

Of course, the Sensor is broken in half and they only give me the half with the stem on it and then they swear that it's the whole sensor. I take it immediately to Rosenthal Infiniti and they laugh and say the sensor is broken completely in two . I call the head of merchants in NOVA, and he has me buy the sensor and fax in the receipt. He then asks me why I have the wheel and why merchants didn't put the wheel and tire on for me. I reply that I think they botched the patch job and I had no intention of buying a tire from them that costs $300. He directs me to go to asburn merchants (where the regional director works), and says the guy there would take a look at it personally.

End result - Ashburn merchants patches the tire (the tire that couldn't be patched), puts it on the wheel, balances it, and mounts it all for free. Oh, and reinstalls the new tire sensor and offers to pay for the calibration costs of the sensor. Asburn guys were top notch. Still miss my weekend with parents.

Conclusion - Merchants tyson corner botched a simple patch job, scratched my wheel, lied about the Tire pressure sensor to my face (as well as other lies). Serious problems there. Avoid.

There were people along the way that were helpful: Marvin at Tyson's Merchant (the rest of the staff are not, and some are outright incompetent). The whole asburn store. Go there if you must use a merchant's. Jini at tire kingdom and Will. This problem seemed to not be corporate-wide at least. But I'm not sure I will use merchant's again.

Brian

 

this is kinda funny b/c the 1st thing my boss says to me when i came in this morning was "we sold another big wheel to merchants" they do that kind of stuff all the time. feel lucky they paid for it b/c sometimes they get away w/o having to pay for it.

 

I went to goodyear in Fair City Mall in Fairfax and they have great service. I had like 4 nails in one of my rear tires. They had the car done within 2 hours. Also checked the tire pressure on all tires and informed me that I was running on too high of a psi and they corrected it for me. Great place.

 

Just curious...how'd you see the nails in the tire? Do you guys frequently check the condition of the tires or can you actually hear/see that would indicate a nail?

 

I never really have checked the condition of tires. If, while I'm walking up to my car and I see something (uneven treadwear, it's obviously low, etc...) I'll take a closer look.

As far as the nail, I spotted that just because the sensor went off and I took a closer look.

Brian.

 

I don't like any Merchants........they have horrible service and I will never bring my any of my cars to them again period.

 

thanks for the info. brian!! try to come out to a meet if you can, next one is at the dealership in chantilly...free food and car care 'advice'...

 

Thanks for the invite. I'll definatly mark it on my calendar and make it if I can.

 

I noticed the nails when changing brake pads. We had to take off the wheel and as I was rolling it to a safe place I noticed the nails.

 

you also might notice a nail in your tire if you see a thin metal shaft with a flat head on the end of it sticking out your tire