Shopping for new tires for our cars isn’t cheap, and it can sometimes be a nightmare because of the sheer number of tire brands available. Sometimes buying used tires can actually save you money, but as one man found out, that can sometimes lead to tire shaking, in a story recounted by a tire salesperson on TikTok.
TikTok user Tire Princess (@tireprincess) explained she recently sold a customer ‘four run-flat tires’ at a size of 20 inches, costing $600, for the customer’s BMW. The tires in question were an even mix of Pirelli and Michelin rubber, and it seemed like a very good deal.
But just a few days after the tires had been installed on the car, the man called up the shop to say his car was shaking badly and it was horrible to drive. Clearly, something wasn’t right. So the tire shop owner invited the customer back to find out what was going on.
As it turned out, the saga went on for longer than the Tire Princess could ever have expected. Thankfully, her TikTok video does a great job of breaking down everything that happened.
This Is What Happened With the ‘Run-Flat’ Tires
@tireprincess Everybody wants cheap used tires until you’re the one standing behind your work 👏🏼 Tires ended up bad, so instead of excuses I put brand new ones on for the same price. That’s the difference between just making a sale and actually caring about your customers. 💯 #UsedTires #customerservice #tireshop #mechanictok #smallbusinessowner ♬ original sound – Tire Princess
According to the Tire Princess, the customer came in and bought two Pirelli and two Michelin tires for his BMW, each one in the size of 20 inches. Not long after they had been installed, the tire shop owner had a call from the customer, telling her that his car would not stop shaking. So the Tire Princess called him back in to see what was wrong.
This is when the story got interesting. “When he gets here, I said, ‘Balance the front two and don’t leave until I check inside your car, because BMWs need to, like, calibrate everything, and I changed the size,’” she said. However, despite this, the BMW’s owner simply got in his car and left.
So it perhaps wasn’t a surprise to then receive another call from the customer saying that the car was still shaking. It came back in again, and as it turned out, two of the tires had separated. With that problem now evident, the Tire Princess offered two Lexani tires to the customer, free of charge, to replace the ones that had been destroyed. “They’re a harder rubber than Continental. So, the Lexani run-flat will take a whole lot longer to run than the Pirellis,” said the Tire Princess.
This Is What a Run-Flat Tire Is
The term ‘run-flat’ tire might not be something that everyone has come across before. A run-flat tire is one that has reinforced sidewalls, and these support a car for a short period of time after the tire has lost pressure. If you have a run-flat, you can usually drive around 50 miles, at around 50mph, before you need to change the tire. So if this happens not far from home, you can still get back without needing to stop.
Based on what the TikTok video showed us, it appeared these tires had come apart internally. The layers within the tire had simply come apart, perhaps due to the fact that these particular tires were not brand new. Mixing tire brands isn’t always advisable either; however, to save money, sometimes it’s the only thing you can do, as we saw with this BMW owner.
Buying Used Tires Does Come With Risks
Buying used tires, however, comes with more risks than if you just bought a mixed set of new tires. Some used tires are excellent, and you can get plenty of years out of some of them. But you have to really trust the description of them, and it is highly unlikely that these tires will come with a warranty of any kind. So, perhaps the best thing to do is simply save a bit more money from work and go out and get new tires.