Category Archives: Tyres

garage services, Tyres

Are wheel alignment services a rip off?

A tyre industry expert tells me “In over 90% of cases, imperfect wheel alignment will not cause premature wear to tyres. Yet at least one major tyre retailer pays a bonus when their fitters sell this service to more than 80% of their customers.”

I was reminded of this statement after I gave a tyre safety talk to The Women’s Hub in Worthing recently where I was asked why alignment wasn’t included in the cost of a new tyre.

‘Shouldn’t a new tyre be sold as fit for purpose’ was one of the questions I faced. By that she was suggesting a new tyre should come correctly balanced and wheels aligned.

In principle she’s right of course but I explained that a good tyre fitter would identify if there was a problem with a car – he’d be able to tell this from uneven tyre wear of course. But not all are that honourable it seems.

Wheel Alignment Options

In my experience, you’re asked if you need your wheels aligned when you buy new tyres and, if you don’t know why you might, you’re told various reasons why you should.

I have enclosed examples of the sort of thing we’re told at leading tyre sales websites. Advice ranges from the informative to the downright pushy.

But shouldn’t ALL wheels be checked for correct alignment BEFORE the tyre centre/garage/dealership sells you alignment services on the basis of your genuine need, tyre safety and future financial economies?

After all, we’re talking about an added £29 or more to a tyre bill here. And perhaps there’s suspension/steering work to be done to the car too?

Understandably suppliers of wheel alignment equipment sell theirs to garages by promising ‘a major contribution to their profit line’ as stated by the Supertracker website, when they up-sell this service to motorists.

NB: FOXY Lady Approved tyre centres, garages and dealers have all signed the FOXY Lady Promise ‘to never overcharge, patronise or sell motorists anything we don’t need.’ This is because we know that many automotive businesses incentivise sales staff to sell us services like alignment that we don’t need.

Website Advice re Wheel Alignment

This is what some of the bigger tyre businesses say about their alignment services.

From National Tyres & Autocare

Have you noticed any difficulties when steering? A vibration or pulling to one side? It may mean that your wheel alignment is in need of attention. At National Tyres and Autocare we use specialist equipment to make quick and accurate adjustments to the front wheels of your vehicle and with a front wheel alignment cost of only £29 why not add this to your next safety inspection?

They recommend this every 6000 miles.

This seems a reasonable and un-pushy explanation to me.

From Halfords Autocentres

Correct wheel alignment improves road holding and maximises the life of tyres. Aligning the front two wheels resolves alignment issues for most vehicles, but if additional work is needed a quote will be provided.

This does suggest financial and safety benefit for an outlay of £29.

From ATS Euromaster

ATS is selling three options costing £36.99 to £64.99 for a choice of alignment services.

Quite frankly this text baffles me (and most motorists) with its terminology and diagrams.

Knowing very little about the subject, I suspect that most motorists may fall for this pitch, even if they buy the cheapest option (which is still some £5 more than most others).

From Kwik Fit

Checking your wheel alignment regularly can prolong the life of your tyres by up to 12,000 miles and increase fuel efficiency due to the reduced rolling resistance with the road – saving you pounds at the pump.

Keep an eye out for unusual wear on your tyres, such as premature wear on the inside or outside shoulder, which could be a sign of incorrect alignment.

Kwik Fit offers a free wheel alignment check at all of our UK centres so stop in if you need any help.

NB: Kwik Fit offers front two wheel and four-wheel alignment options. The price of our four-wheel alignment includes the Hunter Hawkeye four-wheel alignment inspection and the front toe adjustment only. Additional charges will apply if further adjustments are required including any rear wheel adjustments. You will be advised at the time of inspection prior to any work being carried out. Should we find that no adjustment is necessary, we will happily refund you.

I have yet to see any evidence for their 12,000 mile claim or increased fuel efficiency, but the free check and an offer to refund where no four-wheel adjustment is necessary will reassure many.

Recommended Wheel Alignment Best Practice

I’d like tyre centres/garages and car dealers to agree to tell motorists that

1) “In most cases imperfect wheel alignment will not cause premature wear to tyres”
AND
2) “We won’t sell wheel alignment services unless we’re sure/can prove they’re needed”.

Then the wheel alignment suppliers will need to convince garages that they can STILL afford their equipment. Good luck with that sales pitch I say!
_________________________________

Clearly wheel alignment is yet another ethical challenge for the automotive industry.

So, as I see it the challenge is for tyre service providers to

EITHER continue earning easy money selling £29 alignment services that most motorists don’t need or understand

OR do the decent thing and prove the need for wheel alignment services before selling them.

The likely outcome here, dear blog reader, is that good businesses will do the right thing (which is why you need to know who they are) and bad businesses won’t, getting richer from rubber-related rip offs.

This is all the more likely because garages, including tyre centres, aren’t regulated, allowing cowboys to trade alongside the genuinely good garages, tarnishing the latter’s reputation in the process.

By all means tell FOXY your good or bad stories relating to tyre sales and/or wheel alignment services – whether you bought these in a tyre centre, garage or franchised car dealerships. We can then share these within The Club.

FOXY aka Steph Savill

NB: To ask for tyre advice, Club members contact FOXY Helpdesk.

To find a good tyre centre you can trust, check our FOXY Lady Approved Tyre Register

By all means comment here via Twitter @FOXYTweets

Or Steph Savill via info@foxyladydrivers.com

Tyres

A Tale Of Winter Tyres

Steph testing new runflat tyres
Steph testing new runflat tyres

We are often asked to recommend and review types of tyres for winter driving.

That’s not always as easy as it might sound because there’s a massive choice out there, it’ll depend on the motorist’s usual mileage and, often, where they live.

I’m not talking about brand names here – we don’t have any deals going on with tyre manufacturers so we can be truly independent.

We’re fussy about the garages we work with of course! Please note we run a network of FOXY Lady Approved tyre centres where women (and men) can rely on not being overcharged or sold services they don’t need.

About Winter Tyres

Winter tyres are recommended in temperatures below 7°C or if you drive in Europe on the likes of a winter-sports holiday or in mountainous terrain. They will increase your safety and make driving less risky and scary in wet, icy and snowy conditions.

Winter tyres use a different rubber compound to summer tyres. As such they don’t harden in colder weather so you enjoy better grip, shorter stopping distances and, let’s face it, less chance of having an accident in the winter.

The downside is that you’ll need two sets of tyres, which is likely to be too expensive if you don’t drive a lot and/or can cadge lifts and leave the car at home until temperatures rise.

Different tyre centres offer different customer services. Some operate trendy titled ‘Tyre Hotels’ where you get your winter tyres fitted in October and they store your summer tyres for you until you change them back in March. And so on.

But probably the better as well as cheaper model, space permitting at home or in a garage, is to take your summer tyres home with you in October and your winter ones in the summer.

For example Micheldever Tyres, who own the Protyre garage group, give you smart tyre carriers so they’re easy and clean to carry and store.

About All Season Tyres

As the name implies, all season tyres are a combination of summer and winter tyres. They are recommended for motorists who live in particularly wet and cold weather conditions, all year round.

So if you’re short of storage space and don’t fancy the hassle of changing tyres twice a year, all season tyres may appeal more than winter tyres.

The downside is, they don’t perform as well as winter tyres in harsh conditions when you need them most. But they do better than normal tyres in cases where you’d aquaplane otherwise.

“You pays your money…”

About Runflat Tyres

An added consideration is if your car has runflats or a Tyre Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS). In this instance a light on your dashboard tells you when a tyre pressure level is of concern and you might have a puncture.

At which stage you can either top up an offending tyre, there and then, or know you have a range of 50 miles (at a speed of no more than 50mph just in case) to get to a garage to verify or rectify matters.

This is very reassuring for me, on a motorway, for example. In my case I don’t have a choice because runflats are compulsory for BMWs and MINIs.

But the good news is that if you have a TPMS on a car that doesn’t specify runflats you can now buy Bridgestone DriveGuard tyres with the same properties and reassuring benefits as runflats.

NB: In this instance, I’m talking about a runflat as an ordinary tyre ie neither an all season nor a winter tyre. You can’t mix them with ordinary tyres, it’s to be all four or none, but you don’t need to carry a spare wheel or know how to use a puncture repair canister (see FOXY’s earlier blog about this).

The downside is that they can be quite a bit more expensive than ordinary tyres.

Conclusions about Tyres in Winter

FOXY tells Club members to buy the best tyres they can afford. If you don’t do much mileage then budget tyres will likely do nicely. If you ply motorways as I do, then you want the best premium (well known) brands as their tyres will last longer.

Remember that you get what you pay for re tyres. And NEVER EVER buy cheap part worn tyres because you don’t know where they’ve been.

Hopefully this blog will help you decide what’s best for you when considering having winter or all season tyres fitted. And if you’re a Club member you can always ask us for a second opinion.

By all means let us know what you decide and your tyre shopping experiences via Twitter and @FOXYSteph or @FOXYTweets.

FOXY

Tyresafe Online and Social Media Award Winner 2016

Tyres

When is wheel alignment necessary?

wheel_alignment_machinery_400I received a worrying email from a well known member of the motor trade last month suggesting that many wheel alignment services were unnecessary.

Granted this person isn’t part of our FOXY Lady Approved network so this could have been schadenfreude, but any suggestion of rip off practice (that I’m not already aware of in the motor industry) deserves FOXY’s investigation.

So I asked our Helpdesk team to give me the benefit of their considered technical opinion. Which is in the pipeline for the Information section of the Club website but in the meantime here’s the background to this debate.

What is tyre alignment?

FOXY Lady Approved garage group, Protyre, explains wheel alignment as follows:

“Wheel Alignment can also be referred to as ‘tracking’. Either name relates to the alignment of the wheels to your car and is very important to the lifespan of a tyre as well as the overall handling of the vehicle. If the wheels are mis-aligned, the tyres will wear unevenly and may result in changing tyres long before they need to be.”

What does tyre alignment and tracking involve?

Clearly a good salesman will make a compelling business case for tyre-fitting garages to have an alignment system installed on the premises.

“It’ll cost you £x and you can expect to charge motorists £y. So, assuming industry figures, you’ll be into profit in Year z.”

This is often a clever system that you drive over and/or using equipment that tells the operator if your wheels are correctly aligned to prevent your tyres from wearing unevenly.

And the garage then charges you some £30 for this diagnosis, possibly leading to other chargeable services and solutions.

Of course, if your wheels really do need aligning then this is going to save you a lot more in terms of premature tyre wear.

How to tell if wheel alignment is needed or not?

It is normal to assume that there is nothing wrong with your wheel alignment if your car drives in a straight line with no steering input from you (other than a bit of a wander to the left due to road camber).

And it’s also reasonable to expect the nearside (that’s nearest to the kerb) front tyre wearing a wee bit faster than the offside tyre, due to a combination of annual mileage, road camber and the effect of the UK having so many roundabouts.

But if you get a vibration through the steering wheel at certain speeds, the problem is more likely to be wheel balance (not alignment as such). Professional tyre fitters will always balance the wheel/tyre assembly accurately when new tyres are fitted and whilst that SHOULD last the lifetime of a tyre it is possible that one of the balance weights might fall off ie gets lost. Or he wasn’t a professional tyre fitter in the first place of course.

So, the need for wheel alignment SHOULD be very rare but is most likely to arise when your car has suffered trauma (yes they get stressed too) by a case of bad parking ie hitting the kerb aggressively or suffering a severe pothole jolt. After which tyre wear can be rapid, reducing braking efficiency and affecting your safety if neglected.

You will find more information about this at the National Tyres & Autocare website.

Who can you trust to take care of your car tyres?

In short, come the day when your tyres need attention, all motorists need to decide for themselves whether to trust the advice of the individual giving it. One way to give you that peace of mind would be to choose a business from our Tyre Services Register https://www.foxyladydrivers.com/female-friendly-tyre-services.php or garage network where listed businesses have all signed the FOXY Promise to ‘never sell women anything they don’t need.’

Either way, I’d hope that the fab feedback we received about Tyreland in Southampton this weekend might be typical of the customer service given by staff in other FOXY Lady Approved garages now and in future.

“Isaac was extremely professional. He made the experience much less daunting as a female because he was so friendly. He was really thorough. I’m pleased he also suggested I get my tracking sorted. There was no pressure to get anything done & as a result I felt like I totally trusted him. He should be used as an example to others, as to how to make females feel comfortable. An asset to your team.”

Well done Isaac.

Otherwise, if none of the above scenarios apply or ring true in your case, you probably do not need wheel alignment. So just say ‘Not this time, thank you’.

Finally, remember that Club members can always ask our Helpdesk for a second opinion about their tyres. Which is one of many good reasons to join the Club before you need us of course.

We know what we’re talking about when it comes to tyres, so, where in doubt, you can trust us.

FOXY